Expectations on Perfection

While it may not be the most original idea to post on some kind of social media outlet about the LDS General Conference, I’m going to continue the trend today. I feel that this week I learned a pretty profound lesson about life that deserves to be shared.

                My lesson came as President Uchtdorf spoke. He took the theme of his talk from the line in the Bible in which the Lord tells his apostles that one of them will betray Him. They ask the question: “Lord, is it I?” President Uchtdorf then crafted a very inspired message about looking inwards for blame, rather than pointing fingers around us.

                This bothered me a little. While the cleanliness level in my room attests to the fact that I am no perfectionist, I constantly struggle because I set extremely high expectations for myself. I tend to think that I am a much better athlete, scholar, missionary, roommate, and person than I actually am, and I get frustrated when my performance never turns out as well as I anticipated. After 21 years of periodically feeling like I’ve never achieved my potential, I occasionally wonder if my expectations are too high for myself—am I justified in thinking that I really can be that good?

                Then President Uchtdorf said something that I loved. He said that if we are blind to our mistakes, we are also blind to our divine potential. Conversely, if we keep our sights on the unlimited potential that has been promised to us, then we should be seeing our weaknesses. To me, this means that my thoughts are justified. If we understand the true extent of what is possible for us to achieve, then we ought to be discontent with mediocrity. When we see what we can become, then we should not be complacent with where we are; we ought to continue rising and climbing and becoming better and better on a daily basis.

                Now I’m not advocating for perfectionism—that can end up with a lot of broken hopes and can often do more harm than good—but I am advocating for all of us to continue on our individual journey to become better. The heights of complete self-mastery might not be summited today or tomorrow, but we are doing something wrong if we are not walking uphill.  Every day ought to be a new step for us in the right direction. Inevitably, we will slip and fall, but that’s okay as long as we continue to keep making another attempt. I’m determined to continue to climb upward and search for more within myself as I try to become the man I imagine that I can be, because I have an idea of what perfection is, and that perfection eventually is attainable. 

   

It's all in the Details

                I am currently an employee of BYU Dining Services. The other day at work I was assigned to go visit one of our store’s suppliers to pick up some food. As I was walking out of the door, one of the sub-supervisors in my department asked me to check up on the status of two croissants that we were supposed to have received earlier, and bring those croissants back if they were finished. I nodded, figuring that the suppliers would know what she was talking about, and headed over.

                Upon arriving at the supplier’s work area, I inquired into the croissants. I was directed to the head of department, who appeared rather over-worked and stressed. He glared at me and asked me what I was looking for. I replied that I was looking for two croissants for my department, expecting that he would know exactly what I was talking about. He didn’t. He got closer in my face and very loudly informed me that our supplier sells six types of croissants, and asked what type I was requesting. I had heard nothing about the croissants that day, and could only whisper out that I honestly didn’t have any clue. He then announced that I was no use to him, because without knowing which type of croissant I needed, he couldn’t help me. He pivoted and strode off to the far weightier matters of the BYU Dining Service than some minimum-wage student employee.

               As I walked away, I thought about how badly that communication had failed. I had assumed that he would know the details of what was going on with the croissants, and when that assumption backfired, I found myself in the embarrassing and humbling situation of having to admit ignorance. It was an interesting application to what we’ve been discussing in my MCOMM class, and it taught me that it is really important to know one’s audience. Making assumptions is risky, and it is far better to gather all of the details and present them in a way that cannot be misunderstood, rather than only gather and present a fraction of the necessary information and hope that another party can understand. Misunderstanding and frustration is the result when we only present a part of the whole. After this experience, I’m determined to do a better job of really trying to understand all of the facts before I leap to trying to communicate to others.

Confidence

            Recently I’ve been getting plenty of chances to play basketball. I love the sport and really enjoy playing it, but my skills (or lack thereof) sometimes leave me frustrated. Not that I’m terrible, but I haven’t played a ton of competitive basketball in my life. This past week I’ve learned how important confidence is on the court.

Earlier this week, I was playing in a game with one of my friends who first saw me play during my mission. For whatever reason, he came off of the mission with the impression that I was a really good outside shooter. Consequently, he gave me the ball a lot and was always encouraging me to shoot it. Inspired by his confidence, I was confident, and I shot a lot. Incredibly, the shots went in! I played very well and had a blast the entire time.

Contrasting that experience is the chance I had to play with another group of my friends. One of these friends was an All-state basketball player, and I didn’t even make the high school JV squad, so his opinion of my game perhaps wasn’t too high. We were playing on the same team, and there were a few times when he yelled at me after I made a bad play. Consequently, I started getting fearful, and instead of being confident in my skills, I doubted my own ability to make even the most basic shots. And this spiraled into a self-fulfilling prophecy, as I did indeed end up missing a ton of really wide-open and easy shots. My play could only be described as "terrible".

What this experience taught me is that confidence impacts performance. And I don’t think that principle is limited to basketball, or even sports in general. As we are confident in ourselves, we take more risks and we experiment. We will put our full effort into important decisions and actions. On the other hand, when we are fearful, we tend to pull back and withdraw when key opportunities arise. As the saying goes, “both he who says ‘I can’ and he who says ‘I can’t’ both end up right.” Thus it is important to always try to stay confident, and help others do the same. After seeing firsthand the value of confidence, I’m determined to try to do a better job to help those around me stay confident. Both of my friends had a big impact on my performance, and I’m determined to be that friend who compliments others and puts his trust in others, so that they can achieve their full potential.

An Outsider's Take

           To preface this post, I just want to be up front and say that I’m a person that likes to be right. I always want to have the right answer for a question, and I absolutely hate being wrong. While perhaps on the outside that looks like a good trait, by implication it usually means that I am also fairly proud. I like to find my own ways of doing things and I don’t usually go ask for help.     

This week I was given the opportunity to stretch out of that pride. I was given a difficult assignment in one of my classes, and after a couple of hours of working on it, I ended up stuck. It was frustrating place for me to be, but I swallowed my pride, and for the first time in my high school or college career, I decided to go into a TA lab and ask for help. I sat the TA down and opened up by journal to start peppering him with questions, only to be surprised to hear him refer me back to the instructions on the assignment. Lo and behold, there were the answers to 95% of my questions, sitting right in front of me. All I had needed was someone simply to say “look over the instructions again” and almost all of my problems were solved.

This experience, along with many others, has taught me the value of an outside opinion. There are so many times when in the pursuit of my own excellence, I tend to de-value the advice I receive from others. That’s a terrible idea. My mind only brings but one of many important perspectives to the table. I cannot possibly think of every single possibility for a situation, and consequently I need others to point out flaws that I overlook. There is so much power in the questions “what can I do better” and “what do you think I can improve?” When I ask those questions, information flows in ways that I never would have thought of. I discover a clearer picture of the truth, as well as valuable insight and perspective that points towards a better course of action.

I’m now determined to not let my pride slow me down any more. If I truly want to function at my best, it’s time to start asking more questions and acting a little more humbly. 

Persistence

For of those new to this blog, especially those from the MCOMM class, I say welcome. I’m Aaron Wilson. 

             For the last two years, I’ve been spending my time in the urban jungles of sunny Thailand, giving my heart and soul to the cause of helping the wonderful Thai people as an authorized representative of Jesus Christ. That experience has defined me in new ways that I never imagined. I tried very hard as a missionary to really throw myself into the missionary work and forget the world I left behind. I won’t make any claims to being a consecrated, great, or even a good missionary, but I do feel that I succeeded in forgetting a lot of the world that I left behind. How do I know that? Because coming home has left me feeling like a whale in the middle of the Sahara—lost, floundering, and utterly confused.

            I’m trying not to wax too poetical here, but for two years I spent every waking moment trying to hone a skill-set and a mind-set developed around the missionary’s purpose. And in a flash, most of the direct applications of the skills that I’d learned went obsolete. The ability to drive boldly in Thailand will only get me a ticket here. The ability to walk up to complete strangers and invite them to repent and be baptized is next to useless at BYU, which is perhaps the most LDS-saturated environment on the planet outside of the Conference Center. Suddenly another skill set is being demanded of me—the ability to read and write in English. I’m expected to have small-talk conversations, when all of my impulses tell me to start searching for people’s needs and try to find ways to help them repent. Apparently I also lost the ability to read a text, memorize the key meanings in it, and then regurgitate it on demand in a test settings. That one was shown rather painfully on the few quizzes I’ve taken.     

            Now I don’t say these things in an effort to earn sympathy. I fully know that there are millions of others who have walked this path of post-mission adjustment, and that I don’t have a corner on the market. And I will not for a minute stand for anyone even thinking that I feel bad about my decision to make a mission, just because the end of it was hard: I had the greatest time of my life and learned so many valuable things in Thailand. I wouldn’t trade that mission for the world. But I explain this background simply to frame a context with which I can explain what I learned this week, and how I’m going to apply it.

            My lesson can perhaps be best illustrated from the feelings I had as I sat down after getting systematically demolished on the BYU tennis courts this past week. I love tennis, and I’ve played competitively for a number of years. That night, however, all of my practice and skills seemed useless when my brother steamrolled me for an easy 6-0 victory for him. The frustrating part for me was that I had played the best tennis since I got home. It had felt like everything was clicking for me. I was hitting the ball hard and fast, and my accuracy was good, but yet somehow I had won pitifully few points and had looked like the middle school practice squad in comparison to my opponent. I was never even in serious contention for the match, not even for a second. The easiest way of saying it would be to say that my best simply was not good enough to compete.

            And so I sat down afterwards, and at that moment I was faced with a decision. I was in a sour mood after taking such a beat-down. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. The voice inside my brain was telling me that this wasn’t worth it, that it was time to walk off the court and go do something less painful. I knew at that moment that I’d have to go back to the basics and start re-learning tennis skills that I had once mastered long ago. The thought of that painful process made me bitter, for I thought I was cheated. Hadn’t my rustiness on the court come because I was doing something better? Should not all of my hard work before my mission and on my mission combined to allow me some free-pass on going through the growing pains all over again? And at that moment, the idea of just giving up and walking away from the court seemed mighty enticing. Why come back? I’m not being forced to play tennis. It’s not fun, so why not stop?

            That thought of quitting has not been companionless in my mind for several weeks. The thing that I’m learning about the rebuilding process is that it isn’t easy. In my mind, I had assumed that previous success in tennis, school, or any field would give me a short-cut in rebuilding my new life. The fact is that a house burned down still requires the same amount of labor to build it the second time as the first time did.

            As I reflect on that moment on the tennis court, I am reminded of President Uchtdorf’s words: “Our destiny is not determined by the number of times we stumble but by the number of times we rise up, dust ourselves off, and move forward.” The truth is that it will take more effort, discipline, and practice than I was expecting in order to get my tennis game back, just as it will require the same effort, discipline, and practice to succeed again in school, social settings, and whatever else that I’m lacking. But rather than get frustrated that my progress seems slow, or that I seem to be under-achieving in compared to what I used to be able to do, I’m choosing to take the positive viewpoint. I’ve succeeded once before; why I can’t I do again? I choose to build on the hope that comes from realizing that I’ve walked this road once before and conquered it, and so I am determined to do it again.

            Now this isn’t just a post for all the returned missionaries in the audience. But for everyone reading, we all have our different times when we feel that we underperform, that we fail to reach up to our personal expectations. When that moment comes, look not to the ‘failures’ of life, but instead choose to see everything as a chance to get better. Life is longer than we think, and eternity lasts forever, so there will always be another chance. It is never too late to be better. Don’t give up, because tomorrow will be better. As a wise friend once told me “the only way to fail is to stop trying”. So keep your eyes on a brighter tomorrow and keep hope that things will get better!

            For my part, I decided in that insightful moment to keep playing for another 40 minutes, in which I continued to get trashed by my competition, but I know that in so doing I’m now just a little better at tennis than I would have been had I quit. I walk away from this experience more resolved to never quit in all of my re-adjustment activities, and to work harder than ever before, because I know that quitting makes my weaknesses part of my future, and only continuing to strive harder makes them my past.

Tis The Season...

...to give talks. I'm currently in the middle of a 6 week period during the which I'm giving 3 talks in church. Public speaking certainly isn't my favorite thing, and 'the circuit' has been giving me some stress, although seeing so many wonderful people at my two farewells made everything worth it. Anyways, a few people have asked to get a copy of my talks, and since I wrote pretty much every word I was going to say, I'm happy to oblige. Starting us off is the talk I gave at the Wilsonville Farewell:


Good Morning Brothers and Sisters! For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Aaron Wilson. I grew up in this ward and last summer my family moved to Provo. It is great there, but I must say that it feels wonderful to be back with you today.
        Last summer, I was able to go on the High Adventure with the Priest’s Quorum. We chose to raft the Deschutes River, and we had a great time. However, there was one point in the trip where things got a little bit dicey…         On this trip we had 2 rafts, and 1 river guide. I was one of the lucky ones who was in the raft without a guide. This wasn’t an issue until we came across what is known as “Whitehorse”, a class 3 rapid. Our guide had us beach the rafts and walk until we could look out over the rapids, and then explained to us exactly what we needed to do. His plan was for us to stay on the right side of the river, and then in between two rocky islands in the middle of the rapid, he instructed us to row quickly and get onto the left side of the river. We set out. The first raft with our guide easily threaded the rocks, and we figured it would be easy to follow them. Then we got into the rapids, and suddenly the water was swirling and raging around us. I was convinced that we were going to die if we didn’t make the maneuver, and so I paddled harder than I ever have before or I think I could again--I was convinced I was going to die. Despite all of our efforts though, the water was too strong. We got the raft pointed in the right direction, but our little adventure ended when we hit the rock. We were stuck.  

        I’d like to point out that there was absolutely nothing wrong with our plan to get through Whitehorse: it was sound, and it would have worked. But we didn’t actually DO our plan, and so we got into a little bit of trouble. The guiding scripture for my talk today is James 1:22, which reads: “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only.”The Prophet, Thomas S. Monson, has said: "We have been provided divine attributes to guide our journey. We enter mortality not to float with the moving currents of life, but with the power to think, to reason, and to achieve." This raises the question for each of us: are we "doers of the word" or are we "floating with the moving currents of life?"
I’d like to break down this question a little: what exactly are these “moving currents of life?” If our choice is to be a doer or be in the current, than it must be that these currents are the things that don’t lead us to become doers of the word. They are opposites. But I think that we can break these currents up even further, into two parts. The first of which are the things which directly lead us away from the gospel—sin and vice. You all know what I mean here: these are the things that are bad for us. Sin by definition is evil, as Mormon clearly shows us when he says:
“Wherefore, all things which are good cometh of God; and that which is evil cometh of the devil; for the devil is an enemy to God, and fighteth against him continually, and inviteth and enticeth to sin and to do that which is evil continually.”

I think it’s fair to assume that everyone here knows that they need to stay away from evil. For that reason I’m mostly going to gloss over this category and move on to the second, more dangerous type of current: complacency.    
Elder Donald Staheli of the Seventy said, and I quote:
“One of the greatest tragedies of our time is that so many people live so far below their potential. The word "potential" implies talent and ability. It remains "potential" because positive action has not been taken to develop and magnify those talents and abilities to their full potential. Generally we fail to achieve, not because we are engaged in evil acts or doing the wrong things, but rather we fail to fully do the important things that will support our personal development in things of a temporal and spiritual nature. While we call these sins of omission, I tend to think of them more as the tendency of the natural man to procrastinate or passively drift along with the events and happenings of the day. Without focus and priority this is so easy to do, and it is generally quite comfortable, too.” (endquote)

        He then further defined sins of omission as “a passive or ‘too busy’ attitude to do many of the good and essential things that the gospel requires.”
These sins of omission are in my opinion the harder ones to handle. It’s rare that raging currents sneak up on us. More often, it is the water that is just a little bit faster that we get caught up in. At first it’s not a big problem, but if we continue in that path we will soon find ourselves in the midst of the rapids. When we stop doing the little things in our daily lives—the scripture study and the prayer that are so essential to living the gospel—it is like we have stopped rowing. We don’t really feel like we’ve lost control of the raft, because things are smooth and it doesn’t seem to matter, but we can’t be caught napping when the rocks and the rapids of life sneak up on us. Irish philosopher Edmund Burke summed this up when he said: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”  I think this applies to our lives—evil will fill the gap if good isn’t present, thus we need to be especially careful to fill our lives with good instead of evil.

But what is it that that we should be doing?

To Quote Elder Staheli again:
“Periodically, the First Presidency and Twelve Apostles invite members of the Seventy to join with them in the temple for a testimony meeting and the sacrament. In one of those meetings a member of the Twelve stood and related his testimony of the allegory of the tame and wild olive trees found in Jacob 5. Like the Master of the Vineyard, he asked the rhetorical question, "What could I have done more?" relating the question to his life and calling as an Apostle. He then taught us how we might review our own personal stewardship with our families, our Church callings, and service to others. The reflection on "What could I have done more?" becomes a soul searching experience.”
I looked up the scripture he was referencing, and it reads as follows:
“But what could I have done more in my vineyard? Have I slackened mine hand, that I have not nourished it? Nay, I have nourished it, and I have digged about it, and I have pruned it, and I have dunged it; and I have stretched forth mine hand almost all the day long, and the end draweth nigh.”


        So far, I’ve covered the currents—which are the “do not’s” of this topic. However, there is a reason James words the scripture the way he does: it is much easier to be “doers of the word”, not “do-noters of everything but the word”. Why then have I spent so much time on the “do not’s”? Because as Elder Staheli says, the improvements we need to make in our life are very personal in nature. He calls it a “soul searching experience.” Everyone in this room leads a different life, and each of us has something different that we can do better. I simply cannot tell of an application that fits for everyone here today. So I am going to ask for your help. I would invite you to consider—either right now, or sometime before the day ends—Elder Staheli’s question: “What could you have done more?” Or, if you’ll allow me to modify that question a little: “what can you do more?”
Maybe for some of us it is being more diligent in our scripture study and our prayers. Maybe for some of us it is to put more effort into our callings. Perhaps it is time to mend a friendship, or to reach out to someone in need, or to finally invite that friend to church. Again, I cannot tell you all of the good things that you could possibly do. But please, find something that you need to work on. Pray for guidance on what that improvement should be, and then set a goal to do it. But most importantly, I am here today to encourage you to then act.

President Monson said “It’s not enough to want to make the effort and to say that you will make the effort… It’s in the doing, not just the thinking, that we accomplish our goals. If we constantly put our goals off, we will never see them fulfilled.”

President Uchtdorf echoed this sentiment when he said: “Let us be the ones to act and not be acted upon. Preaching is fine, but sermons that do not lead to action are like fires without heat or water that cannot quench thirst… Thomas Edison, the man who bathed the world in glowing electric light, said that ‘the value of an idea lies in the using of it.’ In a similar way, gospel doctrine becomes more precious when it is put to use.”  

Brothers and Sisters, I might add that the value of the gospel lies in the living of it. Without action, the gospel is meaningless. You can go to church for however many hours you want on Sunday, but if you are not a different person on Monday morning, there is no profit. If we are to become changed and improved, we must put in some effort, because change is never a passive process.
I’d like to wrap up with explaining to you why you should do this—why you should become a doer, and not a hearer. In life, action is hard. It is uncomfortable. It involves getting up instead of passively staying seated. The gospel is no different; at times, it can be hard to motivate ourselves to do good, to live the gospel. I can relate to this difficulty. In about a month, I will give up everything in my life right now: my family, my schooling, my friends, my job, my hobbies, my sports, and all of my time. I will travel halfway across the world to a country I’ve never visited, to teach people in a language that I’ve never spoken or even heard. I will be asked to work with a complete stranger for every minute of every day, and together the two of us will be asked to do more work and harder work than anything I have done before in my life. I will be asked to do all of this is an completely foreign environment, filled with strange food, blazing heat, and gross critters. I’ve often asked myself why I would do something that on the surface seems so crazy. Perhaps the answer to why I am leaving for Thailand and why you should take the next step in proactively doing the gospel are the same. In that hope, let me explain to you why I am going to serve the Lord:

I am going to serve because I know that God is real. He lives, and He loves me, you, and all of his children on this earth.

I am going to serve because I know that God has a plan for us, a plan that will lead us to more happiness than we could ever experience on our own.

I am going to serve because I know that God has set up his church on this earth today, and that His church is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I know that God has called a prophet for us at this time, today, and I know that that Prophet is Thomas S. Monson, who leads this church.

I know that the Book of Mormon is the inspired word of God, and that by living the principles taught inside it, we can live a better life, a happier life. I know that the Book of Mormon was translated by the power of God, through the prophet Joseph Smith.

Lastly, I know that Jesus Christ is my Savior. I know that He lived a perfect life, endured the worst that Satan could throw at Him, and suffered and died for my sins. I know that because He did all of this, He has provided a way for me to return to live with Him, and a way for me to become perfected in Him.

A couple days after I received my mission call I wrote the following in my journal: “The reason that I'm going out there is my love for the Lord. He has given me everything that I have, everything that I ever will have. And I have been so richly blessed. Incredibly so. Unbelievably so. So for my Lord I will wade through the jungles, dodge the snakes, choke down the food, endure the heat, spend my all trying to grasp Thai, and testify to everyone that I meet about the reality of the Atonement.”



My question to you today is simple: what do you believe? If you’re not sure, find out. Pray and ask, because God answers prayers. And once you know, act on that. Don’t sit back, but a doer. I testify with all of my heart that in so doing you will blessed with a fuller and happier life.
I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

What I do to Make the Grind More Interesting

Have you ever wondered what happens when you deprive Aaron of sleep by waking him up at 5, sending him to work at 6, boring him with little to do, pointing out an injustice, and giving him nothing to lose? Since I’m sure this question has been resting on your mind as heavy as Isaac’s very fatty Mongolian food rests in my stomach, I’m here to put your mind at ease.

            Perhaps it was the fact that I had more than the normal amount of Wheat Chex this morning and the extra energy just needed to be burned off somehow. I personally think it’s more plausible to blame the fact that I took a delivery at 8 a.m. to someone with the last name Cobb in the JKB, a building already designed as a maze to throw off my subconscious, and clearly as magical as Hogwarts given the fact that climbing an entire set of stairs can end me on the same floor as I started. I’m convinced there was no way I walked out of there with my mind as intact as it was when I walked in. Whatever the case, I decided today that Food To Go needs a little excitement; we need a strike!

             Today I spent most of my time at work planning said strike. I’m positive this is how it’ll work out:

Step 1: After several muttered comments from the populace about the general lack of breakfast on Mondays and the fact that we can never get a promotion, I’ll break into a song that ends up rallying our motley band of students behind the motto “And BYU will know”. During this part, I will break an old broomstick in half to signify breaking the will of the mighty Chet and Ted as I sing. After that dramatic moment, the strike will be officially started.

Step 2: On the first day of the strike, we’ll gather together in the parking lot and do a sick dance number to try to gather support. The theme: “Open the Truck and Seize the Day”.

Step 3: Realizing that our strike won’t work without more involvement, we’ll send special ambassadors to Catering Conference and strike a deal with their marble-shooting, slick-talking leader. In celebration, we’ll throw a concert in the HFAC, only to have the campus police break up and capture yours truly.

Step 4: After threatening me for a while, Chet will then offer a deal so good it makes the Mudslide cookies look unappealing. Unable to refuse and locked in the basement of the Morris Center, I’ll sing a soul-searching song about my dream to go to Bangkok, ultimately culminating in the decision that nothing could be more important than said dream. I’ll take the offer.

Step 5: Upon being released to work, I’ll have a change of heart, spend the night with a sympathetic journalist from the Daily Universe printing fliers and tossing them off the top of the Swicket, Clyde, and Wilkinson Center. Come morning, I’ll once again be found singing in front of the dock as the CSC rolls up to deliver the daily food. However, as I get to the chorus, the rest of the student body in the form of an angry mob will storm up from between the New Heritage Buildings to join in, perfectly timing their singing to my solo performance.

Step 6: We win the strike. ‘Nuff said.

Life’s Teeter-Totter

It was game 4 of the Wilson Family Reunion Basketball Showdown. My dad, brothers and I were down 2 points in a “win by four” inspired overtime. Someone on my team had taken a shot, and it was rattling around the rim, clearly on its way out of the basket. We had really needed to score on that possession—one more basket from our opponents and team Stan Wilson had its first loss. I was determined that I was going to snag that all-important rebound and give us a second shot. There was one obstacle however, and that obstacle took the form of Trevor Winn, who was situated between me and my prized Evolution basketball. Trevor has at least 3 inches and 40 pounds on me, and it’s not exactly 40 pounds of fat, if you catch my drift. The game depended on that rebound though, and I was not going to walk away with a loss. I launched myself upwards and across the court, lunging, reaching, desperately trying to get the ball into my hands even if it took sheer willpower alone.

However, this is a physical, not a psychic world, and willpower only gets you so far. Trevor easily wrapped his big hands around the ball and began to bring it down to the safe position of cradled in his arms. As we all know, when you bring your arms in from completely outstretched, you have to bend your elbow. The problem now was that I was still hanging around in Trevor’s airspace, with my face right where that natural bending movement was about to place his elbow. With a resounding wham, I proceeded to plant my face on that elbow. The elbow won the brief physics battle with my neck, and suddenly my body was going from moving forward in a rather vertical position to moving backwards in a rather horizontal position. My arms were tangled up near the ball and thus my ill-advised flight attempt ended with my back slamming straight onto the hardwood, and my skull literally bouncing off the court a millisecond later. For the next two days I would suffer from whiplash and a stiff back, and I now sport a rather nasty bruise on my hindquarters.   

           

            I tell this story not to gain pity, but because story-telling is my classic way to get across a point. I believe there is a moral in this experience, and that moral traces its way back to my over-arching view of life. And as we know, Aaron’s views of life warrants a blog post. The moral in this story is simple. I wanted two things on that basketball court: I wanted to win, and I wanted to be able to walk off the court without injury. However, I ran into a situation where I couldn’t have both. In my mind, the pathway to victory demanded that I leap like a banshee and attempt to get that ball. Meanwhile, such a maneuver was extremely risky as far as keeping my good health intact goes. This is the dilemma of contact sports in a nutshell. It is an impasse—you want to win, but yet you want to keep healthy enough to play again. Sometimes those two goals are in direct opposition. But playing basketball isn’t a fork in the road. Somewhere there is a middle ground—at some level of competition I can win without ruining my body by trying. My goal then, is not to overdo on one side of this decision or the other, but rather to straddle the line and find the balance between these two.

            Once again, this applies well outside the narrow scope that is sports. Everywhere you look in life, you can find these similar problems. It sounds great when I play the piano super softly but by doing so I risk hitting a key so softly that no sound at all comes out. I can drive faster on the freeway to make an event on time, but if I get pulled over I’m certainly going to pay for it both in time and money. This is most obvious when looking at time. I could study my scriptures or I could study my schoolwork. I could go for a run or I could catch up on sleep. In economics, this is called an opportunity cost, and as a survivor of J. Kearl’s Econ 110, I can’t help but see these costs everywhere. If you look deep enough, everything you do cancels out something else. At the most basic level you can never have that last minute back. (This makes me very thankful if you’re still reading this, by the way).

            In some ways, this could be a fear-inspiring idea. You could ask yourself if you just wasted a couple minutes reading this post, for example. You could second-guess everything you do to make sure it was the absolute best thing. Let me tell you from experience; barring a miracle, you’re probably not going to always spend every second of your life, every dollar you make, and every thought you allow in your brain in the absolute best way.

            What are you supposed to take from this concept, then? I can’t answer that question for you, but I can share what this means in my life. When I start recognizing these dilemmas, when I start seeing the teeter-totter I’m standing on, I can do a much better job of finding that center point. Accounting, the field I’m most likely going to go into, is based on the premise that information leads to better decision making. When you know the facts, you can make the choice that is in most harmony with your desires. That applies here. I look for the seemingly impossible decisions in my life, and then I find a way to balance out my choices in a way that I think will do best. It is trial and error, yet I feel by at least knowing what is going on, my balancing act becomes much better, and my quality of life improves.

            Isn’t that what we all want?

Thai Tidbits: Expectations

         

     Though it hasn't been announced yet on this blog, I hope that most of my readers know by now that I have been called to serve a two-year mission in the Thailand, Bangkok Mission. I've been hesitant to post much about it, because to be honest, I have to fill two (and possibly three) talks at church on the subject. That’s no cakewalk for me, so I have been keeping my thoughts on it private until then. However, I since it is such a large part of my mind and my thoughts, it really is a shame not to share some of it. Thus it is that I introduce you to a new series on “Cool Air from A.C.”: Thai Tidbits. I hereby promise to post little facts about Thailand in general or my mission specifically and my thoughts on those facts, just to keep my readers up to speed.

            However, this is the inaugural post of the series, and with “Go Big or Go Home” as the theme for this kick-off, I’m about to tackle the deep issue of the realization of dreams. Strap in, because we are in for a long ride.

             A mission. My mission. As a Latter-day Saint young man, the very word “mission” by itself evokes visions. Visions of white shirts and ties, of doors to be knocked on, of farewells and homecomings, of nametags, of opening letters, of the Missionary Training Center, of exotic lands and exotic peoples. As you may have noticed, I tend to romanticize a lot of things. (And yes I just used the word “Romanticize” because I learned what it meant just this last semester and have been dying to use it.) When I talk about my favorite athlete, I don’t mention rippling muscles or primeval war cries, I wax poetically about his awe-inspiring control. When I talk about my favorite sport, I don’t mention the sweat and grime that comes from busting around the basketball court for an hour, I discuss the moments of creativity and the beauty I see in them. So if the average LDS boy can’t help but feel ‘caught up’ in the rush of excitement that a mission embodies, imagine what I, with my overactive imagination and over-analytical mind have felt.

            You see, my mission has been the focal point of my life since… Well, since I was born. Although it’s cliché to say, I literally grew up singing “I Hope They Call Me on a Mission”. Nearly every church lesson I ever had pointed in some way or another to the point of my life when I would don a little card with the name “Elder Wilson” on it—and if you think about it for a second, that is a ton of lessons, most likely in the thousands. Whenever I made “life goals”, serving a mission was at the top of the list. When someone asked me what it was that I was going to do with my life, “serve a mission for my church” was in some way part of my reply. This is all just to show you that my mission has been a part of me as long as I can remember.

That’s a lie though, because in fact, it has been more than just a part of me. It has defined me. I can distinctly recall a moment in my life when I made a life-altering decision to become more social, to break out of my comfort zone as a young teenager and become—not the introvert that I naturally felt inclined to be—but “a people person”. Perhaps such a thing would’ve happened as I grew up, perhaps it was a natural decision that everyone has to make, but I attribute much of what has happened in my life since that time to that decision; because at that time, I made a conscious change to become someone better. What inspired that move by me? Why, the realization that I would make a terrible missionary as the introvert that I was, of course.  

So what happens when an event which you have spent your entire life preparing for suddenly stops becoming a dream and starts being a reality? Is it even possible for such high expectations to be fulfilled? I for one believe that the two years I spend in Thailand will be everything I want, (in part because I am committed to putting in the effort to make it that way), but of course such an answer is exactly what you would expect from someone who hasn’t gotten to the reality yet. Perhaps this theme of the realization of expectations might be a subject for this blog as my mission looms closer and more dreams are realized. However, in one matter, I can definitively say that my expectations have been fulfilled, even exceeded.

For me, one aspect that has always been part of my ‘dream of a mission’ has been the mission president. I have a clear mental picture of wise spiritual giant who is stern yet loving, and passionate yet realistic—a leader who I will be eager to follow. Yesterday evening, I had a dream-to-reality moment, because I was privileged to walk into the MTC with my parents and meet President and Sister Senior, who on Thursday are leaving the States, flying to Thailand, to taking over the mission.

The experience was absolutely wonderful—and I walked away very uplifted. The Seniors were everything I’d hoped for and them some. They were funny, quickly breaking in the ice and getting to know us and each other. There wasn’t an awkward moment in the half hour we got to spend with them. President Senior especially took the lead role in the conversation, and I honestly don’t know how I could have been more impressed with the man. His manners were gracious—he said everything right—but I could sense that he wasn’t one to idle words; sincerity was beneath every compliment he bestowed, and even in something as simple as “it’s a pleasure to meet you”, you could tell that he actually meant it. Yet he contrasted this kindness with an abounding enthusiastic about his role, and seemed ready to take the missionary work in Thailand to a new level. From passing comments I could see that he was going to demand my all for the work—there was a steely fire inside of him that promised seriousness about our task to preach the gospel. But that was and is fine with me; that’s the reason we will both be there. Why not give our all? Spirituality abounded as well, and it was obvious that this man was an inspired servant of the Lord. Honestly, I feel that if President Senior told me I needed to open up a new area in the depths of heck, I would do it in a heartbeat.

A day later, I’m still in a little bit of a daze—could I have gotten so lucky? I cannot wait to get over there. Despite the wonderful plans I have for this summer, I would be fine leaving tomorrow. Any apprehensions I had about Thailand are quickly disappearing. I have a great leader to guide me along, and together with him and the other elders in Thailand, we can do a great work. I’m ready to go get to it! 

The Great Wall

I have a saying that tends to get me into trouble with a lot of people. The saying was my infamous phrase “Cold is mental.” (which, although I didn’t mean it to, carried the implied insult that anyone complaining of the cold was simply a mental midget.) As one might imagine, I usually got a deadpan “has-anyone-checked-this-guy-for-some-serious-mental-problems?” stare after I unleashed that comment, followed by the statement “Uh, no it’s not.” Fortunately for my readers, this post is not about whether or not cold is mental. That position is awfully extreme, and I although I still hold sway that mental fortitude does matter in how one deals with colder temperatures, I have retreated from such extreme logic. No, this post is about something that I believe in much more passionately than approaches to dealing with foul weather: my underlying belief in the near-infinite powers of the human mind.

As is usual, my journey of thought started with a rather simple experience. My freshman year of high school, I succumbed to peer-pressure and signed up for the cross-country team with a couple of my friends. Our coach, who was also a math teacher at the school, still remains one of the most singularly unique men I have ever met. Mr. Barkley was known for odd sayings dubbed “Barkley-isms”, his obsession with gnomes, and his love for all things relating to Star Wars, but above all, his ability to turn any subject into a fiery philosophical lecture. (I will probably forever remember him famously going off about the danger of nuclear weapons in a post-apocalyptic society for nigh unto half an hour, during a math lecture that supposedly focused on logarithmic functions.) But despite his unique mannerisms, the man was wholeheartedly dedicated to running, and he knew what he was talking about when it came to cross-country. Thus it was one day that a Barkley lecture sprung out of someone complaining that they had, and I quote, “hit the wall” during a race. That is to say, they didn’t believe that they could have gone any faster without their body rebelling and shutting down. They had reached the limit of their physicality. Barkley’s response has forever echoed in my brain. His short answer was simply:

“No you didn’t. There is no wall.” 

He was wrong, of course. I obviously couldn’t run a 4-minute mile, nor could I now. If my body was somehow forced into doing so, it would shut down, and I would collapse, no doubt about it. It could very well kill me. So while Barkley’s thought was noble, and carried with it a promise of ultimate human potential, I came to the conclusion that in this matter, he was simply mistaken, caught too deeply in the unique depths his mind probed to see the real life truth.

But was that idea as wrong at seemed?

            This has been something I have stewed over again and again, and the more I think about it, the more wrong I feel in my beliefs, rather than in his. (His explanation later in the lecture helped as well—I have to give credit where credit is due). You see, there is a second, less obvious message in the four words “There is no wall”. On the first level, that’s wrong, and will always be. I can’t lift a house with my bare hands, in the same manner that I can’t run a 4 minute mile, or just sign up for and win an Iron Man Triathlon tomorrow. It is not going to happen. But look where this road takes you, in the running example.

You are halfway through a race, wheezing for air, desperate to get to the finish line. You’ve set a grueling pace so far, and in the back of your mind there is that little voice saying: Give it up, you can’t do this. Give up. You have to slow down. Give up. Two roads split here in our theoretical example: those that believe that the wall exists will say back: You’re right. I’m going to collapse at this pace. I have to slow down.

The other path is for those who, like Barkley, don’t believe in a wall, but believe in their invincibility instead. That mind will say: Ha, you say I can’t run this fast? I can do anything—including speed up! Watch this!”

Can you see what happens? Runner number one slows down—he’s afraid of the wall and he shies away from it. He might very well end the race with a good time, but the runner who heads straight at that wall at full speed will always beat him. Do you know why? Because the actual chances of hitting that wall incredibly remote. (To remind you, the wall is a simile for the physical threshold where you are completely incapable of doing more). Our brains are triggered with hundreds of “walls” that exist only in our mind, designed to stop us from ever coming up against the real wall of our physical limitations. Runner 1 ran up against one of those glass walls and stopped. Runner 2 ran right through.

Think about that for a second. When is the last time you saw any athlete just collapse from sheer exhaustion, completely incapable of moving? Lebron James plays nearly every minute of the highest level basketball games in the world, against some of the most athletic men the world can offer, yet he still walks off the court at the end of game. John Isner lugs his 6 foot, 9-inch, 245 pound frame around the grass courts at Wimbledon—with all the pressure that comes from playing those storied courts—for eleven hours, yet still finds the strength to get his feet in the right spot so he can fire away the match-clinching groundstroke. The cream of these examples is Scott Jurek, an ultramarathoner, who collapsed halfway through Death Valley’s 135 mile, summer-scorching “Badwater Ultramarthon”. Scott was competing just two weeks after winning a 100-mile race across the country. He was literally facedown on scorching hot asphalt, when he made perhaps mankind’s most epic breakthrough of a wall: he got up and ran the remaining 85 uphill miles in a time to not only win the race against some of the fastest runners in the United States, but he also blasted through the races record en route.

The fact of the matter is that the true wall of our physical limitations is so far removed from us that we can essentially pretend it doesn’t exist. The moment we admit it is there, within reach, our potential shrinks to wherever we have placed that wall. We can no longer do better than the glass wall in our minds. I choose to reject that limitation. Who says I can’t go out and run 10 miles tomorrow if I wanted to? If I do, there is no way I will be able to. Who says that after 2 hours of non-stop, high-speed basketball, I can’t manage to pull away from a defender on a fast break? If I do, I will never get the lay-up off. Who says that after several sets in the scorching sun, I can’t muster up the strength and willpower to chase down a drop shot on the tennis court? If I do, I certainly won’t get to that ball. Yet if instead of saying “I can’t” and more fully live Adidas’ motto that “Impossible is Nothing”, suddenly the possibility opens up of me doing all of those things. That is why in my mind, there is no wall.

Now so far I have used examples of sports, of athletic contests. I have done so with a couple purposes: first off, they are what I love, what I think of, how I came upon this philosophy of life; secondly, they are easy to understand in this context; and lastly, because I firmly believe that sports are simply organized contests where life lessons can be drawn. Yet the same concept, I believe, applies into so many facets of life. If I walk into BYU’s testing center fearing Professor Kearl’s infamous Econ 110 test, certain that I cannot get an A, will I get an A? If I decide that a new position at work will take more leadership skills, more knowledge, more courage than I have, how much higher have my chances at failing just gone up? If I decide that I can only have so many friends, affect only so many people’s lives in a positive manner, how can I possibly do any good to someone outside that number?

No, for me I try to live as if there were no walls, no limitations on everything I do. I walk into every test with the mindset that I can walk out with 100%. I throw myself into my new work with a strong belief that I can and will succeed. I will never back down from a chance to reach out to one more person, to make whatever little difference I can.

            This is all well and good, but surely there must be a line, and I must be headed on a path to utter collapse—to overstretch, snap, crash, and burn down, right? Get through as many glass walls as you want, Aaron, but there is still a solid steel one waiting at the end, you might say. Perhaps you would be right. We’re now entering the realm of complete theory. I have one possible answer to submit to you, however. For in the realm of complete theory, I anchor myself to my one guiding star: my belief in Jesus Christ, and my testimony of Him as a real, living Being, risen from the dead, and as alive today as you and I. For Him, walls did not exist. All humanity and hell did their worst to Him, yet He still was in complete control of Himself, able to do that which He needed to do. What gives me so much hope is that He and I were created in the image of the same God. We share the same Heavenly Father, my Savior and I. For I, like you and everyone on this wonderful earth, was created by an all-knowing, all-powerful Being, one with whom absolutely no limitations exist. It is my belief that as I do the things that lead me to become more like my Heavenly Father, I too will find that within me is that same divine spark, and a destiny not confined to bounds, but one in which steel walls are the only ones that don’t exist.

Perhaps cold isn’t mental.

But my belief that it is only in my mind helps me to cope with it better.

Perhaps my body does have a breaking point on the basketball court.

But my belief that it doesn’t pushes me to play better.

Perhaps there is some limit to what I can accomplish in my life.

                        But my belief that there isn’t a limit drives me to live more fully, and more richly.

I choose to live a life without walls, without limitations.

The Skill in Putting One Foot in Front of the Other

            This week I made a discovery that I’d like to share. You see, it was a bit of a stressful week for me, time wise. I was switching to a new position at work, while taking on a new calling at church, (I was called as a ward missionary last week) and surviving finals week. But at the same time, I was still trying to make sure that I meet my normal goals at the same time: getting in better shape and studying to prepare for my mission. And then there were things which I just wanted to do, such as watching the NBA Finals. Time was crunched.

            At this point, I made what in hindsight was a great decision. You see, when I get home from a long day at work or school, I like to take about an hour to just rest. Normally that involves the two great time-killers of my life, Facebook and ESPN, but it also could involve reading, sitting down on the piano and pounding out a favorite tune from “Pirates of the Caribbean”, or even on more rare occasions, playing an hour of video games with Levi. None of those things by themselves are inherently bad, but put together they can suck away a lot of my life if I’m not careful. Anyways, this week my desire to unwind was no different, and I ended up reading one of my favorite books, Born to Run.

            This is a shameless plug, but Born to Run is one of the best books that I have ever read, purely because of the way that it makes you stop and think. The writer, Christopher McDougall, has a passion for running, and he infuses it into every single sentence of the book. He hammers again and again the benefits of running throughout his highly entertaining story. The point he makes—and I’ll try not to go into too many specifics because I think everyone should read the book and hear it in his own words—is that it is in our nature as humans to run. To like to run, even. For according to the researchers he cites, once we can break through our brain’s natural instinct to save energy, we would find that running felt natural to us. Indeed, as the title suggests, McDougall believes we were actually born to run.  

The first time I read the book, I was fascinated, and yet my own experience had told me this wasn’t the case. Determined, I set out on a running rampage—chocking up miles unheard of for a child of Stan Wilson, (which is probably not a ton for any serious cross-country types out there. I’ve done that route once before and I know I have nothing to brag about in comparison to what those people do). Yet while I felt refreshed after a brutal 8 or so mile run in the balmy Oregon weather, I was missing the love of running that McDougall had. I hated the thought of running, and it took a lot of willpower to actually get on my shoes, throw in my headphones, step outside, and leap forward. Somehow I hadn’t found myself in that “natural state”.  Yet the thesis still made sense in my mind, and so the next summer, I was at it again, re-reading the book for inspiration, determined to find what I had missed. Again, I managed to put in some pretty serious miles and get in better shape. Again, I hated every second of it—my body just screamed “Stop!” the second my feet burst out the door.

            Before you get any visions of incredible willpower from me however, let me explain on a quick tangent. It wasn’t that I wasn’t getting any benefit from these runs—I believe my motivation levels are high, but they are still in Earth’s atmosphere. There were some perks, to be sure. I enjoyed the feeling of success after the runs, and I absolutely love conquering my body with my mind. (This philosophy will, at some point, probably merit its own post). Besides, I was fascinated with those few times where I’ve actually hit “runners high”, where my legs just seemed to go without my feeling them, where suddenly things got easy. But all of those things didn’t seem to fit the “natural” description to me, and once I got my fix of them, my desire was done, and my running habits faded away. I was missing the intrinsic joy of running the McDougall harps on—every benefit I was getting was the same benefit that came after any old exercise, be it an intense couple of hours playing basketball, or a long three-set tennis match, both of which were much, much more enjoyable in the moment. Surely I was missing something still, or else one of my favorite books was a book full of baloney.

            Last week, I finally had my breakthrough. It came as I was reading the book in my relaxation time. I was struck by one of McDougall’s many pitches for running. Said he “If you don’t come with solutions to your problems after a couple hours on the trail, you’re just not getting them.” This got me thinking. When had I had a “light bulb” moment on a run? The answer: never. I was too caught up in pushing my body to its limits, in playing music and just generally numbing my mind to block out the discomfort of my legs. The problem with that approach is that it is like taking a fire-hose to get a dishrag damp—it is an extreme overreaction. I can’t discriminately choose to block out the pain of one thing without shutting down most of my mental faculties; and that’s what the music is for—to lose my thoughts and just let the music flow through my brain.

            I decided to switch up my approach then. Rather than just blocking out everything, I left my iPod at home and let my mind run free. Alone, this would only make the run miserable, so instead of pushing to make a certain route by a certain time, I simply hit the roads with no watch and no map in my head. I ran wherever my feet took me, and as far as my legs would allow, at a pace that I felt I could keep up for miles and miles. Lo and behold, the secret switch was finally unlocked. I wasn’t in pain, it wasn’t torture. It was just a great time to be able to take a break from life for some inner contemplation while simultaneously getting the exercise I craved. I’ll admit that it wasn’t magical, but running became much more enjoyable to me. I was just on a laid-back ride through the hills of Provo, deep in thought, without serious pain, not yearning to turn back every step. For once, I actually liked it. It was pleasant experience! I liked it so much that I did it the next day as well. Again, it was fine. Now I’m even looking forward to heading out on another run tomorrow—who would’ve thought I would ever see that day?

            I found that the key to making a run enjoyable to me isn’t to shy away from the pain, but to actually listen to my body; instead of killing myself, just simply being content with pushing myself. Instead of shutting my brain down, I am utilizing the free time to escape from the grind of daily living. By doing so, I’ve found a great new way to relax, to unwind, and to get in my exercise. Try it!           

Kicking It Into Second Gear

            A couple weekends ago, I was with a couple of friends playing ping-pong in my basement. It was a very low-key affair; we were just playing friendly games of around-the-world while talking. As such, nobody was really trying too hard, and we just dinked the ball to each other. At one point though, I was up to hit when the perfect lob came to my forehand side. At that moment, my mind left the situation in the basement and I found myself in a tight match against one of my brothers, desperately needing a back-breaking point to gain some momentum. I whaled on the ball with a vicious topspin forehand that sent the ball blasting off my paddle and across the room. Without having warmed up that shot, my muscle memory was unprepared to hit the ball accurately, and it ended a good foot or so past the back edge of the table, well out of bounds. At that point, my daydream ended I realized that I had just hit a super aggressive shot that had nearly drilled the shot right into one of my wholly unprepared and undeserving friends. To make matters worse, she was a girl. Oops. As everyone gave me a startled look, one of my buddies dryly commented that he had always had had this feeling that I had some hidden rage inside of me. That remark got me thinking, even as I tried in vain to downplay the incident.

Believe it or not, that is not the first time that I’ve been told something along those lines. I was once informed that an AP Psych class, including the teacher, had decided that I was the most likely person in our school to snap and become a serial killer. (Admittedly, my source was not the most reliable, and I laughed that one off). In a way, I can almost understand what inspired people to say that. Let me be perfectly clear though, that uncontrollable rage and murderous instincts are not something I have hidden inside. What you see is what you get with the writer of this blog. And so in the typical manner of this blog, here comes a little rant about what I would like to dub “second gear”, and why it is perfectly okay to have one.

One of the reasons that the title of this blog is “Cool Air From A.C.” (besides the  ring of it) is that you’re really not like to find a lot of hot air on here. Generally speaking, I am a mellow person, at ease to roll along with whatever life sends my way. I think that a large part of this has to do with a general attitude of contentment that I have. Rare are the things that I absolutely have to have done my way. With that attitude, I’m very happy to do something to please another, and so both of us are happy. In life, I try to follow Magic Johnson’s surprisingly sage observation: “Scoring a basket makes one person happy, while getting an assist makes two people happy.” 

To continue this parallel though, there are some times when one just has to score. This morning was a great example of that. I work at BYU Food To Go, which provides takeout catering (i.e. people come in and we give them catering-style food). This morning, our supply of food came in late, there were lots of orders going out early, and we had several deliveries, while understaffed. Somehow I ended up in charge as my two superiors were either gone or busy. It was stressful, to say the least. In the mass of food that flooded our kitchen, we were missing several foods that were supposed to go out in the early orders. Not a good situation at all.

            I try to be “the nice kid” at work, always offering compliments, and throwing myself at every single project that comes around, especially the unpleasant or hard ones, so that my co-workers can just take it easy. I hold myself to a high standard so that they don't have to, or at least that is my goal. This morning though, the ax hit the grind. We were understaffed, we were swamped, and there was little margin for any kind of error. I shifted into second gear. Did I suddenly turn into a rage monster? No. I don’t think I even obnoxiously bossed anybody around. But I was all work, all the time. The playfulness of my nature was gone, because I had, to use the overused cliché, “gotten down to business”.

            Here’s my point, short and simply. I’m all for being nice, easygoing, relaxed, content, polite, gracious, considerate, what have you. I strive to be those things. But sometimes, when something is important, you have to hit that second gear—you have to get going. And when you do get going, some niceties fall by the wayside.

            To cite a much better thinker than myself, I’d like to bring up one of the points in Malcolm Gladwell’s masterful book, Outliers. He reveals some statistics that show that when the co-pilot of a commercial airline is Korean, the plane has a much higher chance of crashing. He then goes to show that the main reason for this is the fact that in the Korean culture, one is supposed to use all sorts of flowery language when talking to a social superior. (Socially superiority is also very clearly defined in almost every human interaction as well) Bluntness is heavily frowned upon. Well, when these Korean co-pilots recognize that something is going wrong, they tend to stick to their cultural norms when informing the pilot. Rather than straight up telling the pilot (their superior) that he missed something and is making a mistake, they circularly talk around the issue at hand. Sometimes it works, and other times, tragedy results.

           

            That’s exactly the kind of issue I’m talking about it. In that situation, the lives of all of the people aboard that plane NEED to be more important than niceties, more important than any kind of politeness. If the co-pilot needs to be ‘rude’ in order to save their lives, wouldn’t you as a passenger want him to be rude? There is a level where the importance of something takes priority over politeness, over consideration for other’s feelings--the point in our basketball analogy where your team needs that basket, and you just gotta get to the rim.

            The key is setting that magic moment when something takes priority over politeness, which of course is not an easy task. With human lives on the line, yeah the choice is pretty obvious. Smaller things like defending pride over a teasing comment from a friend are other side of the spectrum--there's no use in getting worked up over that. It's the middle ground where things get tough: making sure an order goes out on time, getting the right grade on a group project, or winning the game. I’m certainly not perfect—perhaps I set my value on something that doesn't merit the importance level I give to it, yet second gear comes out regardless. (I'm trying to work the I-gotta-be-the-hero attitude in my basketball analogy in the last paragraph out of my "second gear" importance list, for example). In my younger years, it came out every time I stepped on to a tennis court for a competitive match, which was a terrible and miserable way to play tennis. Hopefully since then I’ve gotten better at picking my spots, but this is my fair warning and my justification: I do have a second gear, and I am okay with it. 

I don't think that makes me a psychopath.

Summer Creativity

I am a sports-lover. I love the thrill of a good athletic contest, whether that contest be a meaningless game of kickball for FHE, an intramural ultimate Frisbee game, a district tournament tennis match, or that all-important basement basketball game that decides the alpha male in the Wilson household. (Let it be known that I still reign on that court after two sweeping blowouts this week!). Basically, I am perfectly content anytime that I am playing any sport, no matter who is playing with me, as long as at least someone else is as serious about winning as I am. I love giving my all in any competition. Yet there is one stage that I love more than any other. Despite the fact that I first and foremost consider myself a tennis player, it is not the hard courts that I consider the best athletic arena to play on; it is the hardwood. That’s right, church basketball holds the spot closest to my heart right now.

If you’ll indulge me for a couple of moments, I would like to attempt to explain why that is. I hope you realize what a monumental task that is. Pick-up basketball is absolute chaos. No plays, no coaches, no referees, just a bunch of people flying around a gym as fast as they can. I love all of it—the energy, the sweat, the thrill of victory, the pressure of a big moment, the vengeful feeling of defeat, the high of throwing the perfect pass, the motivating low of turning the ball over, the calculating while trying to come up with a winning play, a winning strategy. All of this happens nearly simultaneously across each individual player, all the while the game flows on at a rapid pace, and thus it isn’t hard to see where the chaos of the sport comes from. All of those contributing factors play into my love for basketball, and yet there is something more than the chaos that appeals to me. As I mentioned in this article about Roger Federer, I tend to see the beauty and the artistry in sports. My premise in that post was that Federer was fun to watch and root for because his skill level allowed him to turn tennis into more of high-level art than a competition.

Comparing Churchball with tennis’ gentlemanly vibe is about the equivalent of comparing the prim and proper characters of Downton Abbey with the harsh and uneducated cast of iCarly. Churchball is pig wrestling to tennis’ equestrian shows. Yet they both do have a certain beauty to them, at least to me. The aesthetic beauty basketball loses in its rough-and-tumble play is substantial, but I feel it more than overcompensates in another important area: creativity.

You see, in some sports you only have a very limited set of actions you can perform while playing. In tennis, no matter what kind of brilliance you show, it all starts on a basic level with a ball hitting a racquet. Baseball is similar, except with bats (which make those who can appreciate the subtleties of baseball very impressive. I personally think watching it is exceptionally boring, but I can understand how baseball fans might feel the same about tennis.) Basketball is in a whole different category. Yes, the rules of dribbling and the ban on kicking the ball might lessen the amount of possible actions available on the court, but dribbling, once mastered, feels natural, and in truth basketball frees up the two most easily controlled limbs (your arms) to do pretty much whatever you can think of, only limited by the limits of your mind.

That is one of the main reasons that basketball is so fun for me. In every post-up situation, every time a ball-handler and a defender face off, every fast break run, in truth, just about anytime a defender tries to stop an offensive player, creativity goes on. To the creative player goes the victory, in most cases. Sure, things like speed, energy, strength, length, and weight definitely matter, but a smart player can overcome deficiencies in any of these areas simply by being creative.

I discovered this fact, the hidden trump card of creativity, in high school. Up until about my sophomore year, I had always played a pretty standard version of basketball, doing everything by the books, according to the fundamentals. Then I started playing my friends more and more often, and my basketball experiences with a coach present declined sharply. I think it was completely by accident one day that I discovered what was to become my bread-and-butter move. The theory behind it is simple and bases on two facts. The first, that since I am on offense and thus know where I am going, whereas the defender has to wait for my move and then counter it, I will have a split-second advantage at the start of a move. Along with this, the shorter the total duration of the move, the less time a defender has to make up for that difference. Thus I could beat a quicker player simply by virtue of being on offense, as long as my move was concise. The second fact is that a defender can only prevent me from going one way—it’s impossible for one guy to be on both my right and left sides at the same time. If they stop me from going right, the left side is open, and vice versa.

Thus, the patented Aaron Wilson “baby hook” was born. In a nutshell, it goes like this: I work my way into a post-up situation (where I am close to the basket with my back to it and the defender on my back, for the non-basketball-lingo-talking readers out there). My preferred location is as near to the middle of the court as I can get, about three or four feet away from the rim. Once I get the ball, I figure out which side my defender has chosen to prevent me from going, and I spin 180 degrees as fast as I can the other way, and take as large of a step as I can, so that I have moved laterally as much as possible. This spin is usually prefaced with a fake of some kind. While spinning, I throw out my arm as wide as it can go, completely utilizing my wingspan and the length of my legs. Then, from that position, I launch a one-handed shot at the corner of the backboard with a flick of my wrist.

It’s a fairly simple concept, but one that is hardly ever used, since the shot at the end is one of the ugliest ways to finish. Plus the baby hook somewhat difficult to master, but I spent a couple of hours working on it in my driveway, and that’s really all it took. Simply put, although it was odd, it was creative, and that creativity made it devastating. My baby hook alone propelled me from a very sub-par basketball player to being a fairly effective scorer, because no stranger that I ever played against saw it coming, or knew right off how to counter it. It was so…odd of a play that people just weren’t sure what to do. I could go against taller, more skilled players and still have a pretty good chance at getting the ball in the hoop.

Then of course, adaptation sets in. My friends in Wilsonville whom I would usually play with started to figure out the secrets to contesting the shot, and it stopped falling. At BYU, I rapidly discovered that quicker players in more crowded gyms meant that second and third defenders came too fast for my baby hook to work as an effective option, and I had to relegate it as a second or third-choice move instead of my primary weapon on offense. Yet even as one option went away, I started finding other ways to put the ball down the cylinder. The creativity cycle started all over again, as I sought to try to find ways to minimize my weaknesses and exploit my strengths.

In the chaos of basketball, ugly things like a baby hook might pass off as just being that—ugly. But when I look and see innovation on a basketball court, innovation that may appear on the surface as less than aesthetically appealing, I see beauty. Things like Stan the Man’s quick-release jumper, Ian’s deep turnaround jumper, Tallmadge’s lateral jump-shot, Dylan’s turnaround, Dillon’s floater, Allen’s backdoor cuts, and so many other countless examples show the true creative nature of basketball. It is that individualistic stamp that every player puts on the game that makes basketball so much more than the crazy stampede it can seem at times. It makes the game more alive.