Back to the Course

The golf course is an unforgiving place.  The walk today was an exceptional experience for me: four pars, 3 bogeys, and 2 doubles for a nine-hole total of 43.  Today I joined up with two other fellows on number four after sinking a long putt on number three for a par.  One of them, a few holes later, said that I seemed to be an expert on getting up and down because I was hitting my irons so well from the fairway.  I said, “Thank you.”

As I played, and walked, I was taken up with thoughts about my moving center, my intellectual center, and the interplay between them.  It was an interesting afternoon.  I’ll get into more of that later but now I want to write a little bit about the eyes.

Often we talk about vision in a allegorical sense; what is your vision? How do you see it? What is the vision of the company? All of these and other references to vision impart a much different meaning to it than seeing with the eyes.

Probably because the eyes are such a major sense when compared to the other four senses, it is only natural to impart to them more importance, to give them a more prominent place in our expression of thoughts.  A diagram of the senses with each of the sensors given a proportional size to its importance doesn’t even show the eyes because they would be disproportionately large in comparison.

Yet when one strips away the myth, the allegory, and the literary references, the eyes are one of the five senses with which we experience the present in which we are involved – now, and only now.  We can’t experience the past or the future with our senses; for that we use our memory and imagination.  These two are often melded into one another as imagination affects memory when we try to remember, and memory influences imagination as we project into the future.

The eyes are a tool of the brain-body and they occupy a unique position on/in it.  They are placed on the front of the head, only about three inches apart, and yet they are able to accurately gauge distances and relative movement of objects anywhere from a few inches to several miles away.  Not only that but they can do this in bright sunlight and in starlight.  But they cannot see the face in which they are set without the aid of a mirror, which reverses left and right unless compound mirrors are used, or by recording, photographic or digital images; still or moving.

Today I became aware that I was able to see all around, up and down, back and forth and almost all of my body, except my face.  The question came to mind, “Is this a message, is there meaning to this?”

The design would indicate that it is not important to see the features of one’s face.  Vanity instills in us a desire to see same, but apparently it is not/ was not deemed important enough to make allowances for doing so without the aid of special equipment.

Yet everyone else around us can see our face.  And because their vision is so acute, honed by thousands of years of evolution and fine tuned by a lifetime of experience, they are able to see in our face the emotion that is transiting our brain at that instant.  Only the skilled actor can control of the countenance and either hide or display a particular emotion; and even then they are wont to give it away.

In playing golf, the eyes are a tool used by the personae of primarily the moving center to determine what motion and to what degree that motion has to be delivered.  They are used by personae of the intellectual center to analyze the situation ahead of time to set it up properly and afterwards to provide feedback on results.  The disciplined golfer does not allow other personae to interrupt this process.

It was my work for today, for the most part, there were struggles among personae; there were physical constraints due to age and ability, there were distractions but, by and large, they were kept to a minimum and the result was a score of 43.

It was an experiment that was successful.  It was premeditated and prescribed; it was called to mind every time the ball was addressed to be hit by whatever club including the putter.  The results speak for themselves and it is worth another attempt.

There is memory associated with each of the major centers of the brain-body; intellectual recalls facts and formulae, emotional recalls situational feelings, social recalls how best to deal with different individuals, instinctive recalls what to do in a threatening situation, sexual recalls how to act/react for procreation, and the moving center recalls what to do to produce a specific movement.

This moving memory, often called muscle memory, is what allows us to ride a bike after not doing it for forty years,  to pick up right where we left off the last time we danced, rode, swam, skated, skied, hiked, ran,-- you name it.

On the other hand, developing moving memory is time consuming and often frustrating.  Recall how often you were unsuccessful in executing a desired moving activity until the technique was finally mastered.

This moving memory exists in many unsuspected forms.  Stair climbing—try a set of stairs that doesn’t have an eight-inch riser; sitting—sit down on a bench that is less than the normal height; yet one can unerringly put his hand on the soap in the soap dish in the shower with his eyes closed, face lathered with shampoo, and water running all over him.

The goal is to allow this moving memory to take over in making a move after realizing that the appropriate work has been done to allow it.  When putting, the last thing I think is, “There’s the hole, there’s the ball; put the ball in the hole,” then I quiet all but my moving golf persona for the putt.  The result is often a rattling in the cup or a tap-in.