Braden Bristo’s – The Journeyman’s Path

If you have hit a baseball flush on the grain of your bat for a home run or thrown a fastball exactly where you wanted to, past a swinging hitter; if you have hit a tennis ball in the sweet spot of the racket strings or a golf ball on the screws of a seven-iron, then you have experienced the best feeling in sports…

Nothing

There is a phenomenon in almost every sport when perfect execution meets perfect timing, and it creates a single moment of pure bliss. It is an odd feeling, because it is no feeling at all. There is no coincidence that the pinnacle of execution lacks any visceral feeling in the body. The experience is a wink of transcendence that comes and goes in a moment.

It is all too ironic that the purest form of competing is really a reflection of inner peace and quietness. When the receiver high points a pass on a jump ball down the sideline there is a stillness in him as he seems to levitate, waiting for the ball. There is a tranquility of instinct in the moment after the hockey or soccer goalie guesses the right direction on a penalty shot and their instincts take over to complete the block. The endurance athlete falls into a rhythm where six miles has come and gone with seemingly no passage of time. The writer can’t seem to get the words out of their head and onto the paper fast enough, and before they know it they’ve written a whole chapter.

In the time you experience this nothingness, you get a short glance into complete self-forgetfulness before you snap out of it and realize what happened. David Foster Wallace referred to these moments and moments like them, when top-level athletes are in flow, as “appointments with the gods.” These appointments are earned through working hard at your craft until it ascends into art, and they are worth the wait to see them through. High level athletes are able to stay in this moment longer, they are comfortable with this self-forgetfulness, they enjoy the earned sensation of nothing, whether they can explain it or not.

If being present were more discernible you wouldn’t struggle with it as much as you do, always dwelling on the past or hoping for a future that never comes. Forgetting yourself when you are “in the moment” clouds your ability to perceive that you are actually “in the moment,” but it is a requirement to even enter that moment at all. Although it may be nearly impossible, if you had total awareness of those blissful moments when you are completely present, then you would never willingly leave. As soon as an athlete gains a sharp awareness that they are in a flow state, they exit that flow state.