I ran from one end of the court to the other. Then from the end to the three-quarter court mark, then from the end to the half line, then from the end to the foul line and back again. The Basketball coach allowed us thirty seconds to catch our breath before starting over again. I didn’t even have the energy to start looking for my breath much less catching it in those thirty seconds. The whistle blew and we started again. Coach called them “horses” or “suicides” but whatever they were named they were killers in basketball training. I wanted to learn plays or do lay-ups or at least scrimmage but all we did was run. Our first month of practice, every weekday, for two hours we would run and run and run. We would run up and down the court, we would run around the court, if the weather was good we would run outside, we would run with a basketball or without, run sideways, run backwards, run in place, and then run some more. Why all the pain, why the meaninglessness?
One of my favorite residents of the local “adult care facility” that I spend time at, rolled up to me in her electric wheelchair with a smile on her face. I knew she had just received outpatient surgery to eliminate some pain from pinched nerves in her hip so I asked her how she was doing. She replied, “Still putting in my practice time.” I smiled because I knew what she meant.
We had talked long and hard about her accident, the twenty-plus surgeries, the constant pain and ever present wheel chair. We talked until she smiled and said this is just the pain of practice before the real thing – the real life that is ahead. “I’m just practicing to make sure I make it to the big game” she said, knowing I was a sports fan as she was.
To her the pain, the work, and the hassle was not meaningless, it was simply practice for the big game. To me the basketball practices seemed meaningless because my eyes were on the hard work and pain and not on the big game coming up. When we got to the game, even in the fourth quarter our team had energy and joy in the play while other teams faded fast and died away. The Latin “sunnum bonum” means the “end goal” or literally “end BONUS.” Are you looking to your sunnum bonum or focusing on your present pain? Do you have a sunnum bonum?