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| Fore, you stupid #@$^*!! |
It’s really too cold to play golf where I live. That doesn’t prevent my sometime friend and golf partner Hamlin Moody from badgering me to play with him – because he doesn’t like to play alone. And he sometimes succeeds, on the warmer of the too cold days, because for both of us, the raw weather provides several good excuses for playing poorly: you lose “touch” as your hands lose feeling; it’s hard to take a free swing when you’re wearing so many layers; the ball doesn’t travel as far in the cold air, and it doesn’t roll any more than it does in the lush of summer, probably less as muddy as it seems to get even in the fairways; the greens, the color of mucus are harder to read, and just harder – they won’t hold anything.
Not
that either of us plays that much worse than we normally do; we just have more
excuses for not playing as well as we think we should. I could play better
incidentally, Moody says, if I were more “aggressive.” “You’re not half-bad,”
he says, “but you could be better, if you were more aggressive.”
I
put “aggressive” in quotes, because here it’s golf jargon. I put it in sneer
quotes, because it’s jargon I happen to dislike. Indeed, I dislike “aggressive”
so much I wonder if I can play aggressively. According to my dictionary
(Google-Smith’s Collegiate), the first meaning of aggression (from the early 1600s) is “unprovoked attack.” Why do I
want to attack a piece of real estate that has done nothing to me? I don’t want
to make war against the course, I want to play it. I want to play it like a fish I plan to throw
back; I want to play with it like a childhood friend.
This
is golf. It’s not football or lacrosse, UFC or GOP.
To me “aggression” is always angry.
Maybe that’s why it’s entered the golf vocabulary; we’re all almost always angry
these days, even golfers, who of all athletes have the least reason to be . . .
and therefore the least reason to vote Republican.
I’m
not even pretending to make sense here, but here are some thoughts on anger
that make sense to me. (They’re all by dead white males – don’t think I’m not
aware of that. But most golfers I know are dead white males, so they apply to
us at least. Actually, most of the Republicans that I know are dead white males, so they could also take note.)
They could note that anger impairs judgment,
according to Aristotle. The
emotions are all those feelings that so change men as to
affect their judgments . . . . Such are
anger, pity, fear and the like, with their opposites. – Rhetoric 1378a20. That the best way to deal with it is not full
speed ahead, take action immediately – carpet-bomb the entire Middle East with
Chris Christie; according to Seneca, the best way to deal with anger is “hesitation.”
Seek this concession from anger
right away, not to gain its pardon, but that it may evidence some
discrimination. The fist blows of anger are heavy, but if it waits [if you
make it wait] it will think again. - On Anger II,
27.
And
it may concede, as Aquinas did, that revenge did no one any real good. Better
to sorrow than to take revenge. And better, I say, to laugh than to sorrow. If
Montaigne is right, we may not take revenge in any case; rather revenge may
well take us. Anger does for sure. Aristotle
says that anger sometimes serves as a weapon for virtue and valor. That
may be, but it is a
weapon whose use is novel. For we move other weapons, this one moves us; our
hand does not guide it, it guides our hand; it holds us, we do not hold it. - Essays II,
31 “Of Anger.”
But if we do not hold it, we’ll grab it too, too
quickly; and we won’t let it let us go, especially if we’re running for office.
For anger is especially for the mighty. But, Proverbs 16:32: He
that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit
than he that taketh a city. A city or a county or a state or the Electoral College, especially when he could be
playing golf. Though it's not bombing . . . anybody.
01.07.16
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