Spot Bowling as a Metaphor for Life

Back in August, I published a blog entitled: ‘The Ultimate Filter.’ It garnered a number of comments and reactions from friends and some of my ‘coffee and chat’ salon compatriots. One of those friends responding commented that he had written a book a while back that seemed to encapsulate some of the same recognitions of life’s intricacies. His book was on spot bowling,

I had never thought of spot bowling as a metaphor for life. My coffee companion began telling me about a book he had written on wheelchair bowling years earlier. During the course of our conversation, I realized that my friend was right; that ‘spot bowling’ could be seen as a unique way of living one’s life.

I observed in my blog that our mind is the ultimate filter. It’s the newest cliché in a long list of ‘feel good’ labels is mindfulness. It comes after a long list of mind-altering techniques, with or without chemical enhancement, to see more clearly the world around us and thought patterns inside our head.

Starting in high school, I was always intrigued and curious about how to see the world in a different perspective. Back in the day, I wanted to journey inside my head sans chemical enhancements.

I had stumbled upon Carlos Castaneda and I was hooked. Granted, his approach to cerebral Valhalla was with magic mushrooms but the journey mesmerized me nevertheless. I was also mesmerized by a hip, chain-smoking priest named Malcom Boyd. Father Boyd’s approach to life wasn’t your semi-hippie ‘transcendental meditation’ approach that held my attention. Rather, it was his attention to detail. He spoke openly and honestly about real feelings, real emotions and real consequences in my own very real world.

Down through the decades, we’ve been introduced to a myriad of new-age dynamics that are guaranteed to change our lives. A quote from a book I recently read said it best: ‘Until we look directly at our minds we don’t really know ‘what our lives are about. Everything we experience in life goes through just one filter – our minds – and we spend very little time bothering to see just how it works.’

I would suggest that once people get a taste of it - it’s so completely fascinating, because really our life is a clear manifestation of what our minds are telling us.’ Good, bad, right or wrong, it’s all there for our perception, acceptance, denial, rejection or embracing.

I’m going to quote frequently and liberally from my friend and his book ‘Spot Bowling.’ So, let’s begin:

‘The important thing to realize from the very beginning is that there is only one score that matters in bowling. That score is the one you keep inside yourself. The one that says how good you really are.’ In our own little world, that truism can be applied to almost every aspect of life. Be it our job, our parenting skills, our hobbies, our relationships, or our aspersions in life.

Dick goes on to say: ‘Maybe the best bowler you can be is an 80-average bowler. So what? If 80 is the measure of how good you should be, when you shoot 90 you have won against the important opponent you will ever have to face – the one you see in the mirror every morning.’

I was never a good runner. To be honest, my jog-run-shuffle could best be described as covering a certain number of miles in any fashion fathomable to get to the finish line. I desperately wanted to run ultra-marathons. The closest I got was twenty-two miles in a 50 miler. I did run three marathons and surprised even myself by not dying on that asphalt journey to hell and back.

Dick continues: ‘Bowling is a mental game first, a scoring game second. What you are up against on the foul line is your ability to concentrate: to be aggressive, to be patient, to be consistent. Whether you have bowled up, as we refer to walking bowlers, or never in your life before wheeling out to the foul line, in a chair, there are only two significant differences between walking bowling and wheelchair bowling.

‘First, a walking bowler has an approach: the four or five steps he takes toward the foul line before releasing the ball. From a wheelchair, you do not have an approach in this sense. While that costs you something in speed and leverage on the ball, it can also be an advantage. Why? You can position yourself to deliver each ball you throw from the same spot. A wheelchair bowler can be far more deliberate and, as a result, potentially far more consistent.

‘The second difference is one you have probably long since adjusted to simply by being in a wheelchair. To be a good wheelchair bowler, you will have to depend on finesse, not force; smarts, not sheer strength. That is why I say bowling is a mental game first.’

I tried to touch on this subject in one of my blogs about my ‘secret garden’ and other quiets spots around my home. Each area provides a very peaceful daily dash of zest to my life. The journey inside one’s head is a life-long affair. Most of us don’t even know it in our lifetime. A few of us made that discovery a long time ago and are still exploring where that pathway might take us.

Carry on, fellow traveler, carry on.