NCAA Basketball vs. the Peaceful Warrior, Part 1: “One Shining Moment” vs. “No Ordinary Moments”

(So this time last year, I was part of a group that provided some content for the Richmond.com Spirituality section of the website. This was one of the articles that I submitted that didn’t get published. I’ll post all 3 parts this week. I’d be interested to know what people think...)


For anyone (like myself) who may not have known, One Shining Moment is the theme song for the NCAA Basketball Tournament. The lyrics of the song glorify the 15 minutes of fame that the best-of-the-best in college basketball get to enjoy:

But time is short
and the road is long
in the blinking of an eye
ah that moment's gone.
And when it's done,
win or lose,
you always did your best
cuz inside you knew...
 
(that) one shining moment,
you reached deep inside,
one shining moment,
you knew you were alive.

This is how the world approaches things: you only have the chance to be alive when you’re doing something truly “great” (whatever “great” means); everything else is just ordinary:

You better lose yourself in the music,
the moment,
You own it,
you better never let it go!
You only get one shot,
do not miss your chance to blow
This opportunity comes once in a lifetime
(“Lose Yourself” by Eminem)

This way of thinking will self-perpetuate until we refuse to buy into it.

Enter in the Peaceful Warrior.

For those who don’t know, Peaceful Warrior is a movie about Dan, a gymnast, who begins his warrior apprenticeship under Socrates, his nickname for a night-shift gas station attendant. What Socrates practices is a radical way of approaching how you live each moment of your life. Early in the movie he makes the comment, “That’s the difference between us, Dan: you practice gymnastics. I practice everything.” The implication of this is that we go through life without thinking (or truly paying attention) about (or to) what we do.

The first lesson Dan learns is to “take out the trash” of his mind, emptying useless thoughts, and to accomplish this, Socrates throws him over the side of a bridge into the water.

“And while you were falling, tell me, Dan, what were you thinking about? (You were) Present. Devoted, 100% to the experience you were having,” not thinking about anything else except what was happening right now in that moment.

Immediately after this, to Socrates’ comment that Dan’s mind is “filling up again, missing out on everything that’s going on,” Dan says, “There’s nothing going on.”

Socrates places his hands on Dan’s shoulders, forcing some sort of awareness-energy into his body, making him acutely aware of everything that’s going on: friends laughing together, a dog catching a Frisbee in the park, the sound of textured pages being turned by someone reading a book, and even a ladybug crawling up a blade of grass... all of which are intensified in their sensation by allowing simply being aware of it.

After releasing him, Socrates finally responds to Dan’s comment by saying, “There’s never nothing going on. Take out the trash, Dan. The trash is anything that’s keeping you from the only thing that matters: this moment. Here. Now.” Then he whispers, “And when you truly are in the here and now, you’ll be amazed at what you can do, and how well you can do it...”