The golf ball arrived at the zenith of the steep incline adjacent to the putting surface. At the summit, the Bridgestone One oscillated trying to push out one more forward roll. One turn East and the little white golf ball would glide down and snuggle near the flag stick. One rotation West and the ball would return from whence it came. Sometimes God wins, sometimes the Devil wins. Golf is not unlike the game of life, an inch here or an inch there and your whole world can be turned upside down. For Jason Day, competing in 2023 British Open in Liverpool England, half of a rotation of his golf ball meant the difference of him making a five instead of a three on the 17th hole. The result placed Day in a second-place tie with three other players. In monetary terms the wrong turn of his Bridgestone cost Day $500,000. Laying on my couch two days removed from knee replacement surgery I watched Jason Day’s eyes as his golf ball had returned to the exact spot, he had just struck it. His eyeballs rolled to the back of his head which was pointed directly to the sky Realizing full well it was past any time for any kind of divine intervention. “How could the game be this cruel.” Once you become aware that everything in the game of life and the game of golf is controlled by yourself and not by anyone watching the game, you’re left with two choices: Throw a hissy fit and give up, or swallow hard, take your medications, and start over.
There are a litany of perspectives when it comes to god, the devil, and the overall spectrum of religion. My personal theory is that everyone possesses an energy representing all their positive potential and an energy that is in the business of selling you the easy way around all of life’s inevitable obstacles. My entire life has been two, long, separate, conversations with the two spirits that are in a constant battle for my soul. Sometime in my late 20’s I entered a 30-year contact with the darker side of my inner self. The deal was not very complicated. I proposed to my dark side that if he stepped out of way, helped me navigate the big catastrophes. He would let me see what I produce without interference from all things that come easy and burn fast. There was nothing written, simply a verbal agreement between me and one of my soul mates. A standard quid pro quo with the side of myself that fed my destructive compulsions. I had three simple requests:
1. I get the girl.
2. I receive shelter from the horrible curve balls we are unable to hit (car accidents, cancer, victim of crime)
3. I will maintain a full head of locks well into my golden years.
I wanted to be accountable for what I made of this life. My success and failure, all my wins and losses. Only I was not willing to surrender my soul for eternity, so I kept my requests reasonable. If those three requests were met, then my personal Lucifer could get his pound of flesh. When the fourth quarter arrived that would be my time to pay the piper, life well lived or not. .”The test will either make you quit or it will give a greater appreciation for all that went before and all that lies ahead.”
It was a bleak and blustery Sunday night in March of 2020. As I walked out of the Egg’s Nest Tavern, I braced for a head wind I sensed through the damp.. It had been a month since I turned sixty and it was time to button down the hatchets. I had just left my dad’s house for what would turn out to be the last time the two of us would be together in my childhood home. It wasn’t 100% clear to me yet that my evil partner in crime had not so subtly began collecting his debt. In the prior couple of years my business was disrupted to the verge of panic creeping into my normally unaffected façade. Six weeks after that stormy night in March of 2020 my Dad died in a nursing home. The death was covid related. My business was failing, now my muse was gone, and the country was shutting down for a pandemic. On top of these life events my physicality was morphing into “busted down old man”. I had already had one hip replacement and was preparing to have the other hip and right knee replaced in succession. I don’t think of myself as a “woe is me” kind of guy but I dug myself into the proverbial bunker of a long private recovery. The dark side of my psyche was showing me that life is meant to be hard. That nothing great can happen until you understand that you can’t make it to the promise land without experiencing the pain. By the grace of God my inner devil had gotten me this far in one piece, it was his turn to take a piece of flesh.
The kind of battle I was about to wage called for clarity. There was no way I could get through these tests unscathed if I was under the influence of alcohol. It is often said that people, places and things need to change if you as a person are going to evolve. I quit all of my vices and stopped frequenting the normal haunts filled with the losers and the hustlers who I called friends. It was time to dive deep into my immediate family and get a grip on my personal health. Sometimes in life your grit gets tested. Do I have the gumption to adjust to a life that I never really wanted to embrace. We buried our dad in April of 2020. Gone was daily confidant and best friend. The Pandemic raged on. I suffered through two bouts of long covid, both times they were wrongly diagnosed, one as a heart attack and one as a bad flu. While I was sick, I was being bamboozled out of major bucks from a former business associate. After making a ascent to the top of the mountain, for the first time I was sliding backwards. My strategy for running the race has always been to have the look of the hair but the brain of the tortoise. And nothing frightens the tortoise more than falling back. The tortoise is slow and steady, going backwards is never an option. By the deep spring of 2020 I was spiraling downwards. My emotional, physical, and financial state was in peril. It was time to get back in the boat and start bailing. The alternative was to watch my ship sink into the abyss way before its time. The ball had rolled back to my feet.
The payback had begun. I have lived most of my life with a lethal blend of arrogance and pride, now it was time to face the reality of living life when youth, at last, had run out. What, if anything, had been learned in fighting the good fight for 55 years? What if anything was owed? It was getting easy to start calculating the losses. My parents had passed. My daughters moved out of New York to Atlanta and Rhode Island respectively. My business was suddenly not the smooth oiled machine printing money hand over foot. The pandemic turned into a political and scientific battleground. I fell victim to the woke bullshit that came from high up places. Moreover, by body, which had been steadily breaking down the past ten years earlier was now in need of major repairs. Most disappointing was that during the pandemic I was cancelled by several friends and partners based on some political commentary. Besides my immediate family I was left to walk in the new old age alone.. Left alone in a hot and deserted place there are only two options: You can wilt and disappear into obscurity, or you can see your plight as an opportunity to make the necessary changes to move forward. My mind went back to the inner devil and the contract I entered a long time ago. I had been given the opportunity to make it to the top and now it was time to see how I reacted as the mob came for my chips. My days of living fast and large were behind me. Acceptance is the first and most challenging step to any type of evolvement. All the things I that identified were either taken from me or I gave up. Three years off, no golf, no gambling, and no drinking can make a man lose patience, or gain it. I had become an orphan in the true sense of the word. Now it was time to see what I could do on my own.
It has now been over a month since I underwent knee replacement surgery. Every movement for the past month had been wrenched in pain. Like Jason Day after his golf ball returned to his feet, I found myself looking to the heavens with a confused and frustrated scowl. “How can I be trying so hard and not making any progress? Will the sun ever come out again?” It was a look of despair that only comes when your life has run into a series of challenges that seem to be non-reversible. The British Open was taking place a few days past my surgery. This was my third major surgery in three years. Unlike any other physical obstacles, the knee replacement was by far the greatest test I have been through for my patience and pain tolerance. The affects of having my knee sawed drained a big piece of life out of me. As a sharp pain shot through my right knee, I reached my breaking point. “This is the final payback. The slate had to be clean now. I had earned the privilege to go back to living life on my terms.” The ball had rolled back to my feet. All that has been giving back had left me completely empty and completely full. The prowess of my youth has faded like the labor Day sun. Anybody who makes it to 60 carries the wounds and scars that are owned solely by them. No matter how hard I’ve tried to reject any flavor of humility in this life it has started to creep in. For me it is now about my inner devil releasing me peacefully into elder statesmanship. My devil has had his way with me most of my life, now it’s time for me to see what kind of deal god is looking for.
