It was a short par 3 with a wide fairway, so I gave it my all. I hit the ball fairly cleanly, it soared high into the heavens, a smile broke across my face. Already I did not care where it landed, these days I take joy in just hitting the ball nicely.
Ah it's going left I noticed. Plop down into the light ruff just by the fairway, shouldn't be too difficult to find.
As I got to the area where my ball dropped, I scanned and scanned for it. Autumn, or Fall as the Americans call it, is well and truly underway. This isn't a big posh golf course so fallen brown, gold and red leaves are left to cover most of the grass.
What would have been an easy ball to find at almost any other time of year was now quite a toughie.
I started to look for my ball, trying to use an old Aboriginal technique I once heard about. Choose the area you are looking in and circle it, then journey inwards to the centre via a series of ever decreasing circles.
If the object you are looking for is in that area, you will definitely find it.
If that is, if you can just bear to look at your feet as you walk. However it feels instinctive to always be looking about ten feet ahead. Allowing your gaze to be captured by the merest distraction. Perhaps a white feather having been shaken loose from the down of a pigeon. Or maybe the glimpse of a daisy, many flecks, specks and bits of chaff. All white, but none is a ball.
But of course! I realise, as ever, that golf is a metaphor for life. Here I am looking for my ball, yet I am not looking in the most economical way. Instead of viewing what is available in my immediate vicinity, I look to greener pastures.
This of course is what we do all the time, whether it be in romance, or in business, or an investment, we let our heads be turned by the next shiny object lying tantalisingly out of reach. We tend not to look at what is right in front of us. There is always a better partner, job, crypto, so we ignore the obvious and instead look further afield.
I decide to ignore the tempting areas just beyond my reach and look down at my feet. I employ the old Aboriginal technique and trace smaller and smaller circles. This time I do not let my mind wander . . .
I practically step on it, there it was lying almost in plain site, only partially covered by an oak leaf still left with a tinge of yellow-green at its stem.
I smile, I take my shot . .
As always the game is not about the score, it is about the lesson it teaches me.
This was a good lesson, don't forget to look at what is staring you in the face, the answer is often right there, waiting for you, hiding in plain sight.
Once more, I thank you golf.
Title image: Ben Hershey on Unsplash
