Look With Soft Eyes

Bagger Vance: Put your eyes on Bobby Jones, look at his practice swing, almost like he’s searching for something, then he finds it. Watch how he settles himself right into the middle of it, feel that focus. He got a lot of shots he could choose from, duffs and tops and skulls — there’s only one shot that’s in perfect harmony with the field, one shot that’s his authentic shot, and that shot is gonna choose him. There’s a perfect shot out there tryin’ to find each and every one of us, all we got to do is get ourselves out of its way, to let it choose us.

You can’t see that flag as some dragon you got to slay, you got to look with soft eyes. See the place where the tides and the seasons and the turning of the Earth, all come together, where everything that is, becomes one. You got to seek that place with your soul, Junuh. Seek it with your hands, don’t think about it. Feel it. Your hands is wiser than your head ever gonna be. Now I can’t take you there Junuh, just hopes I can help you find a way. Just you, that ball, that flag and all that you are.

—The Legend of Bagger Vance, screenplay by Jeremy Leven

 

Authentic Swing

Bagger Vance: Yep. Inside each and every one of us is one true authentic swing. Somethin’ we was born with. Somethin’ that’s ours and ours alone. Somethin’ that can’t be taught to ya or learned. Somethin’ that got to be remembered. Over time the world can rob us of that swing. It get buried inside us under all our wouldas and couldas and shouldas. Some folk even forget what their swing was like.

—The Legend of Bagger Vance, screenplay by Jeremy Leven

I Am Never Done With Looking

There are things you can’t reach. But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.

The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.

And it can keep you busy as anything else, and happier.

The snake slides away; the fish jumps, like a little lily,
out of the water and back in; the goldfinches sing
from the unreachable top of the tree.

I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.

Looking, I mean not just standing around, but standing around
as though with your arms open.

— Mary Oliver, from “Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does it End?” in Why I Wake Early