Saturday 8/26/2017
I haven’t been writing since I got to St Andrews.
I love to write— and I rarely write. My notes from this trip have felt like a fresh gift to myself years later. I so easily forget how important things like this are to me. It manifests in different ways— I withdraw and postpone and dissociate. I don’t write, I don’t check in on friends and family, I cancel plans, I stay in… I wait for the perfect moment that never comes. I let myself forget, because it feels harder to remember and hold myself accountable to what that remembering then asks of me.
Towards the end of my week in St Andrews, I woke up and felt like I just had to get some things out. I wrote about a dream where friends from college all went around telling me my faults and shortcomings.
One was about me seeming like I think I’m better than everyone else, so worried about maintaining a perfect image that I don’t allow myself to just be with people and develop relationships, good and bad.
I’ve shared things in my writing that I am not as willing to share face to face. It has been empowering to share, not because I am pretending to be perfect or different or special, but because I am reclaiming agency and control over how I tell and write my story. A lot of my past writing has felt like an attempt at transformation and becoming, followed by the sobering reality that my body and daily action tell a different story. Regardless, my words still hold something that matters deeply to me.
St Andrews has been very different than Campbeltown and Machrihanish. I feel more isolated in a lot of ways even though there are more people. The tourists all seem so self-contained and there’s less a sense of a local community welcoming me in. The golfers I see often appear as everything I’ve heard about the stereotypical American golfer. They are checking off the big name courses and obsessing over their scores. They seem to be grumpy and initially wary or hostile to people they don’t know. I still smile at everyone I pass but most people just stare blankly or maybe offer a quick hello without much enthusiasm in their face or voice. I wave to golfers I pass on the golf course and I’ve had a lot of them just stare for a second then keep walking, as if wondering what I could possibly want from them.
When I went to try to play the New course yesterday a group of 3 German golfers refused to let me join them. The starter went and asked and I heard each say no. It’s like they’re here to complete a task and don’t want any outsider distracting them or taking away from their experience. Still, there are so many good people here as well. I have to be careful not to feel better than other people who do what they do for different reasons and each have their own story and background.
I took these perceived slights and rejections personally. I think that happens more frequently for me when I’m feeling a sense of lack and loneliness— and looking for another person or experience to fill that void. Reflecting now, I imagine those three friends just wanted to enjoy their time together. And didn’t want to risk a random American wildcard. Maybe they would have said yes if I went up and asked them myself.
I now have wifi in my room for the first time this trip and didn’t realize the effect it would have on my day to day life. It was really freeing not having it before. I would get back from the golf course, have dinner and then go up to bed to read. Then I’d get to bed early and sleep well. Now I find myself doing what I often do at home, mindlessly scrolling and watching videos online until I tell myself I need to get to bed. I’m still reading but not as much. The time seems to fly by and I’m not writing as much or doing things that I was hoping I’d be doing here: like thinking about what I want to do with my life.
When I think about what I really want I often end on something like this: I want to feel like I’m part of a community where my presence has a positive influence on everyone around me. I want to be recognized for being a good, kind, intelligent person. I want to devote myself to a task or a job where I feel capable and enabled to show just how much I can do. I want to help people. When I’m confronted by what I see as someone else hurting or suffering, whether a child ignored or hurt by parents or peers or an animal alone and scared, I feel it so strongly. It’s like I just can’t bear the thought of someone else being afraid and alone and helpless. I think I can endure all of that (though that may not be true), but no one else can. Of course, others can and likely do far better than I. But there’s something in me that just has to do something or feel like I do something to help.
This is the sort of earnest knowing that I let myself forget and run from. I distract myself and disconnect from that immediate rush of love and empathy for another being’s suffering. I don’t have to hold it all— but I do want to help others hold what is theirs to carry. And I also want to stay open to help holding what is mine.
I need to write more. Once I start I find it’s hard to stop. I think about so much and it helps to write it down like this, where I’m forced to really confront these things and reflect on them. I think a lot about my parents and how amazing they are. I hope the mother of my children is as kind and loving and empathetic as my mom. I hope that I can be like Dad, active and smart and involved. I am so lucky. Mom and Dad don’t like to take credit for how we turned out but it was all them. They created an environment in our homes that was unspoken and given, one of love and freedom and joy.
I love you Mom and Dad.
My original “secret” to golf:
I’m going to go on a quick run and then head over to the New course and see if I can get on. I’m now convinced that I play so much better when I’ve done something before like playing tennis or running. It gets my heart rate up and my blood pumping and I notice how my hand-eye coordination and reflexes are so much better after working up a sweat. The last two days I’ve ran before playing and played the best golf of my life. I make solid contact every time and feel more confident over the ball.
I love this insight I had early on learning to play my own game. Recently, I rarely run or exercise before I play. There have been times where I’ve felt more exhausted and drained from running before a round, rather than activated and fully present. Still, my love for the game is connected to these insights and explorations, which I discovered in my unique way as I developed my practice. Golf offers me a way in— to explore all the things I claim to want and be about, to practice mindfulness and yoga, to engage with manifestation and intention setting, to be alive in the world as a body and soul, not just an intellect and a thinker.
I played the Jubilee course on Wednesday after I arrived at St Andrews on Tuesday. I played alone and remember really enjoying just being out there in some beautiful weather. Then, on Thursday I went to Crail and played the Balcomie course with Douglas who was so welcoming and paid for my round and dinner, then gave me a ride all the way back to St Andrews. That was the type of welcoming I’ve been missing at St Andrews. But again, I can be very spoiled. Then, yesterday I played the Jubilee course again and played great. I was paired with another single named Jay from Seattle. He was a bit annoying at times but I’m glad I had someone to play with.
Jay from Seattle was annoying— or at least I remember feeling annoyed. And still, we walked 18 holes together. Maybe he thought I was annoying too, and we carried that with us for 4 hours.
Douglas, on the other hand, was a joy to play with. He lived near Crail, was somewhat of a local legend at the club, and I can’t believe I only wrote one sentence about that day with him. I remember arriving at Crail with a tee time and the starter gave me the option to play alone or to join up with a local who is known to be a bit quirky and different. The starter sort of shook his head and laughed when he mentioned possibly playing with him, as if that would be the last thing I wanted as an American here visiting. But I said yes— and that continued to make all the difference for me on this trip.
I introduced myself to Douglas on the first tee and he greeted me with such enthusiasm and warmth, making me feel right away like an old friend, not a random stranger. It was his duty and pleasure to ensure that my time at Crail was as special and fulfilling as it could be. The conversation never faltered, and Douglas never lacked in stories and anecdotes to share with me throughout the round. We connected over the tentative connection between Crail Balcomie and Michael Murphy’s Golf in the Kingdom, playing the par-3 13th, Craighead, and then discussing the history of Constantine’s Cave. Douglas loved learning how much the book meant to me, and I remember feeling like, to him, that made our round together all the more special. He sent me a nice text a few months later, wishing me a happy new year and good luck as I moved out to Denver to start my new job at 2U.
I played well today with a couple from Tokyo. We weren’t able to talk too much as their English wasn’t great but they said they thought I should be a professional golfer at the end of our round.
I mean, I’ll take it. But my game was and still is so far from professional that I can’t believe they would say that. Maybe I’m just being modest or pretending to be.
8/27 – There’s no golf played at St Andrews on Sundays so I think I’ll go walk the Old course today. I was thinking of running it but I want to give my body a bit of a break. I’ve had this pain on my right side for the past week or so that I feel every time I swing the club and pick up my bag. It may have started from hitting down on the golf ball when the club doesn’t release through but gets stuck in the turf. It hasn’t really affected my shots though and I’ve been playing the best golf of my life.
So I got that going for me, which is nice. Looking back, I don’t really know what this good golf looked like. Good enough to be a professional golfer, according to the couple from Tokyo. I didn’t get to play the Old course during this week in St Andrews, but I’m glad I got to walk it. I would return to the Old 3 years later, playing it the day I got out of a two week quarantine in Fall 2020, as I prepared to start a Master’s degree in Management at the University.
I just had another great breakfast at University Hall. Each morning I go around 7:30 and get a big plate of bacon, sausage, eggs, watermelon slices, and half of a grapefruit. It’s been very nice having that each morning before I run and then head over to the course. There’s been a big Scottish Women’s Baptist conference here this weekend so there are about 100 older women in the dining hall each morning. They all seem so nice and I always smile and say good morning when we pass.
I didn’t realize it was Mom and Dad’s anniversary yesterday and I wish I had said something. I saw a picture that Dad shared on Facebook and they are just the most beautiful couple! More and more I just can’t believe how lucky I am to have them in my life. In a lot of ways, I am always trying to live up to the example they set and be someone that makes them proud and happy. While I know they are proud of me I often get caught up in the ways that I’m not living up to that example. I need to learn how to accept my faults and recognize that I don’t have to be some perfect, faultless person that no one can actually be.
Amen. Read that again, John. “You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” I wish I had more pictures and writing to look back on from this week in St Andrews. But I love how the memories I do have and the words I did write show how much my family means to me. And how earnestly I was trying to find my way and show up as my full self, in all its messiness and tenderness.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading. I’ve been feeling somewhat insecure and self-conscious about what and how I’m sharing here. I’m trying to release some of that tension and pressure I put on myself. This blog continues to be a space for me to explore how I express myself and share what is true for me. I can get so caught up on how I think my words will be received and how I might be perceived by different people. What I’m finding, I think, is that I don’t need to manage other people’s perception of me. And that it might be enough for me to know that what matters is the expression itself.
Maybe the desire to make something beautiful is the piece of God that is inside each of us.
Mary Oliver
One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.
Annie Dillard – The Writing Life
