Most preseason conversations I have ultimately get me thinking about Seneca (one of the many great stoic writers) taking about the concept of not suffering twice from a potential problem.
In one of his letters to Lucilius (a friend and contemporary) he suggests you have to go through pain to know what you can handle and to be able later in life to approach the potential for pain with confiendece: “no prizefighter can go with high spirits into the strife if he has never been beaten black and blue; the only contestant who can confidently enter the lists is the man who has seen his own blood, who has felt his teeth rattle beneath his opponent’s fist, who has been tripped and felt the full force of his adversary’s charge, who has been downed in body but not in spirit, one who, as often as he falls, rises again with greater defiance than ever”.
So for each painstaking loss we have suffered this year, remember it is preparing us for the future conflict or challenging game ahead. We suffer the set backs, focused only on finding was to get faster, stronger and better as a team. The stoics believe that the iron sharpening iron concept almost every coach uses is critical to the mental side of happiness/success/contentment.
Another two quotes speaking even further to my general approach to life (we can’t control the world, but can control how we respond to it) show up in the same letter when he posits:
“There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality”. Following up with: “some things torment us more than they ought; some torment us before they ought; and some torment us when they ought not to torment us at all. We are in the habit of exaggerating, or imagining, or anticipating, sorrow”
I may be an eternal optimist, but I see a path for how our squad next year takes a big step forward. We need to get/develop a true 5 man, and I would love to pick up a combo guard - but Kyle/Smith/Coleman/Miles give us good combos at guard and I really like the flashes we have seen from J.Moore and Meka at the 4.
All that said, this staff has shown an ability to find and develop talent in unconventional players (Moses and Jose most recently). As well as refine raw ability (Usher and any number of our Bigs from years prior to our most recent campaign). I refuse to be negative about the team’s prospects till we start playing next year.
No point suffering the potential of bad news before we know it to be true.
