I’ve become obsessed with process. I think it just comes from creating so many things over the years — from poems, to blog posts, to what ever the everyday things might be that men create.
The pinnacle of the feeling comes at the beginning of the creation process, when I get an idea. From there, I have an internal, unhindered view of what seems like the potential for an explosion of progress — I’m existing on an entirely different plane entirely from the rest of the world and what manifests is bound to be an ingenuous, original plaint of some sort.
And just think about this phenomenon as it pertains to football. I’m a Michigan fan, so you might say I’m doing a little “soul searching” right now, with our team being 1-2, and having fallen for one to Michigan St., a group of especially loose-tongued Michigan haters.
But think about how football began. Was it with a win? Was it with a championship? Was it with Paul Finebaum cajoling your favorite team on ESPN?
No — it was an idea. The idea, by scraps, grew into a concept. The concept, then, rested on practice, the process of perfecting, or rather manifesting in physical form, the idea. In this way, the “process” behind the end result is in a sense a purer facet of the enterprise than an inevitable result — a championship, award or what have you.
After all, if one team is winning, who’s to decide that it’s time to end the game? The length of the game is completely arbitrary.
We get caught up in results. We want a promotion. But what of the guy who wanted that same promotion and missed it by a hair? We want our son or daughter to be valedictorian. But what of all the other parents wanting the same thing and the limited number of spots on the ceremony floor?
And we want our football teams to win conference championship, to defeat their rivals (all three of them, if you’re like Michigan and tend to be in the spotlight quite often), but who defines when the game ends? And when you look at the Mona Lisa, is that the last moment of your life, for her to sovereignly allot where and in what moral stature you’ll rest for all of eternity? No — looking at the Mona Lisa makes you more alive than you were before. This is exactly why it affects as art.
Look, results are great. We all love rings and trophies — the championship game is usually the most exciting game of the season and it’s the champions that make the most noise in the realm of history.
But you play because you love the game. The championship is the goal but the exact motive driving you into this way of life, this grueling schedule of repetitions, workouts and playbook-memorizing, is the process. It’s the feeling of putting those cleats on and gathering speed like a freight train, it’s gripping that leather ball against your gloves like it’s your last possession, it’s looking to the side of you and seeing 10 guys with the same jersey on as you, the lights and cameras even, themselves, more alive already, as a result of your presence.
Herman Edwards once said that, “You play to win the game.” That may be true, but that result of winning, sitting there with the trophy, the accolades and your name in the newspaper in huge print, looks back in astonishment down a mighty big hill, at the process that got it there.