Prove That You Know

If (a BIG if) knowledge is understanding something, and then if (an even BIGGER if) intelligence is knowing what can - or should - be done about it, then wisdom must surely be actually doing it. Or, as Brenda Ueland tells is, we show what we know. 

I was considering this as we walk, me and Spike the old and wise terrier who is under my custody for the next week as his legal masters walk the beaches of Kauai, matching it up with an alert insight from Mihal Csikszentmihalyi's  marvelous FLOW, a titular handbook on sports mindfulness that reads like a Sufi white paper (try writing 400 pages on this subject and let me know when you get to 10), suggesting that every athlete, at some point along their positive trending trajectory of skill, talent and success, will one day realize that the next step, that proverbial step to the next level, will necessitate the mastery of their brain. TRUTH. Luck has a shelf life. You can only fake it so long at the level where all competition is legitimate. No one I have ever met has set their goal as being a sandbagger for life. We have an even worse, yet more accurate, name for these misguided folks, we label them losers. 

Losers because they have failed to understand that it is not the winning that matters most, it is the honest, sometimes painfully so, attempt, intent and raw desire to be the best that they can be. Not simply getting by, as they are accustomed, through a deceptive mixture of good looks, charm, above average athletic DNA and Daddy's money. We know this to be true. We understand the scenario. We get it and we get how to get over it. Ah, but do we have the wisdom to do so? 

We show what we know. Show me that you get it and you have earned my respect. I will cover your behind in even the most precarious and dangerous situations. I will drop everything to come to your aid, no matter what and no matter when. 

This is so basic an understanding, so simple to see, and yet it is filled with complexities, riddles with paradox and bolted to the stubbornness of our hard-wired programming to avoid pain. Pain is still the best teacher in the history of pragmatic learning. It is for this reason, not this reason alone mind you, that we have a powerful learning opportunity. We can practice this.

First, let us agree that we have the secret knowledge outlined above and understand its importance. Second, let us rally around the renouncement of all unnecessary distractions and myths to see that winning is not about a score, but in the attempt, the deep commitment to die for your cause and do what must be done in perfect preparation prior to any canonization through martyrdom. And thirdly and by far the most critical, let us pledge to do so. 

Either way, the path of the hero or in the shadow of the fool, we (parents, coaches, teachers, employers, generals and avatars) watch with hopeful anticipation. We keep the ones that get it, who show what they know in every situation and leave the rest for additional training and testing. Hoping all the while that somewhere along their path, they will get nailed between the eyeballs by a bolt of inspirational lightening. Or maybe by the booming of motivational thunder. Maybe even both. (It is important to mention here that everyone's road to this monumental understanding is a different one. For some it takes an hour, for others a lifetime, and for others still, several lifetimes. It is our responsibility to lead them to water, patiently and lovingly knowing all the while that untimely we cannot make them drink.)

Know. Understand. Do. Show. 

Prove that you know.