The Hurries
He couldn’t slow his horses. No matter how many plays he yelled out, or substitutions he made, or time-outs he called. His team started the game like pent-up thoroughbreds released through an open gate. He could not grab ahold of the reins. Their thirst was admirable. Fervor usually is. But that doesn’t mean it’s not sometimes in the way. In their haste, his players cut prematurely, they left early when using screens, they dribbled into traffic that hadn’t cleared yet and shot as if the ball were a hot potato they had to get out of their hands. On the wings of grand intentions, they made a mess of things.
Coach Wooden used to say, “Be quick but don’t hurry”-- the difference in the two being broader than a barn. Coach knew the necessity of speed on the basketball court, but he also understood the pitfalls of rushing. And he seemed to know that human nature might often wrestle with knowing when to take its turn.
I’m a picker at my core. If there’s a scab that has a turned-up edge, I’m on it. If there’s a knot, I have to get it out. Resolution is the Promised Land and I’ll break my neck to get there. I want to solve the puzzle, fix the fight, iron out the imperfections---NOW. The urge to finish-- get an essay to publication form or perfect a tennis serve or mend a relationship’s jagged edges-- gnaws at me. If a thing’s not right, I want to amend it. Preferably fast. Even though I hate knowing deep down that time must do its deal.
If an eager beaver isn’t careful, he can create more problems than he solves. “Now,” as it turns out, may not always be the most opportune time.
In basketball, the hurries manifest themselves in a variety of problematic ways that act as contagions. If a driver takes off dribbling before a screener gets set, not only does the screen prove ineffective, but the screener often also draws a foul. If a back cutter leaves early before his defender commits to denial, the cutter won’t be open and spacing will be squashed. One ill-timed move leads to another that makes things harder than they probably ought to be. But little does more harm than good than the dreaded homerun pass.
A homerun pass in basketball is a go-for-broke. Like its namesake from the sport of baseball, the homerun flies right past the rudimentary annoyances of hanging out on bases one, two, and three. In basketball, the homerun skips the necessary middle altogether in attempt to reach the goal in one fell swoop. And sometimes, it works. But not very often. Mostly what the homerun does is give the ball to the other team.
The itch to get it all at once has a way of complicating things. The shots good shooters are in a hurry to make turn into misses that pile up like dead bodies on a stat sheet. Then the mummies chase the shooter, so he shoots again real fast to make them go away. This sets off a cannibalistic cycle that exacerbates all kinds of things from the shooter’s confidence to the rhythm of the offense to the coach’s blood pressure to the final score of the game. Shooters are makers not only because they have finely-tuned mechanics but also because of the shots they take and when they take them. The best ones don’t go hunting for looks, they’re just ready when they come.
Waiting, though, is really, really hard. Especially when the result we are hankering for is so close we can taste it.
The urge to jump the gun lives at the border of almost all that is important to us. When we know what we want, we want it. Immediately if not sooner. Writers fight with hurry-up just like shooters do. A good piece of writing becomes a good piece of writing, typically, because it gets wrestled repeatedly around the room. It’s rarely the product of one go. We know that. And yet, once an idea hits the page, it’s almost impossible to resist the urge to jump on it like a calf roper. We want to flip the feet, tie three legs together and throw our hands up in the air. Lasso, land, done!
But writing yearns for the ticking clock. Sentences need to sit. Thoughts need to congeal. Essays are almost always better when we leave them alone for a while.
So are sticky impasses and tangled knots that need fresh eyes.
Itchy shooters miss a lot. Scabs ripped off before they’re ready, make wounds take longer to heal. Just because we want a thing to happen and we think we know the way it should, doesn’t mean that action taken sooner is better than later. Sometimes the best way to seal the deal is to give it a little time.