Kevin Costner and the Tao of Pickleball (2024)

In today’s issue of the Bite Size Pickleball newsletter:

(Kevin is too important to share Bite Size newsletter billing!)

LISTEN TO THIS HERE ESSAY HERE

Several years ago, I was about to back into a parking spot near my favorite deli when I noticed a car quickly pulling into my spot. I was in a good mood, and there was a spot a little further down the street, no sweat. I started backing up toward the new spot when I noticed the culprit. I couldn’t pass this one up. I had to stop.

“Kevin, bro,” I said. “What’s up? You snaked me.”

Kevin was highly apologetic and offered to move his car. I told him I’d give him a pass this time. We then both got out of our vehicles and Kevin asked me if I was going to the same deli. I told him I was and he offered to buy me a co*ke. Talk about your big spenders! (And not just on his movie bombs!)

I told Kevin it wasn’t necessary to buy me a co*ke. I then asked “Kev” how he was doing. He stopped just outside the store, paused for a second, and said, “I’ll tell you…”

Be careful what you wish for. Apparently I had just given Kevin Costner license to dump his woes on me.

“I feel like I am always trying to push a rock up the hill,” he said.

(Keep that line in mind, because we’ll get to how it all relates to pickleball in a moment.)

This is a 100% true story. Kevin Costner asked me if I wanted to have lunch with him. Do you think I took him up on it? Of course I did!

It was super interesting. Most of the lunch I kind of felt like Kevin’s therapist. Not that I said much, I just listened to ATK. All Things Kevin. Most of those things were centered around pushing that rock up the hill and Kevin assuring me that he, and he alone, controls his creative life. In Kevin’s words, he was his own man. Hollywood schmollywood. I found it fascinating he was trying to justify all this to a total stranger, but hey, over my life, people have seemed to enjoy telling me their stories. Which is a bonus for me, because then I get to turn it around and tell a story, like this!

At one point, we were talking music, because we both had bands at the time, and he said something like, “Yeah, not every song I write makes it onto my band’s playlist,” as if there was a big discretionary policy in choosing the band’s songs. You know, maybe the band members all voted, and the managers, and agents had their say, but no, that wasn’t it at all. Kevin continued: “But I get to pick the songs that do make the list.”

Democracy? Kev don’t need no stinkin’ Democracy! (We do!)

At the end of the lunch, I felt like he should have offered to cut me a check for being his TSTWO. Temporary Shoulder To Whine On. Because that’s pretty much all he did. Honestly, he sounded quite troubled, and tired of the whole Hollywood rat race. (BTW, this was just before he got the Yellowstone gig.) And having spent some time in Hollywood, myself, I can assure you, it is a rat race. When I left Los Angeles for good, one word stood out above all the others: despicable.

So how did I respond to the lunch? I went right home and I wrote a good old fashioned country song, imagining I was Kevin Costner singing about his woes. The song is called, “I Am My Own Man.” In the lyrics (see below) I referenced the “pushing a rock up the hill” comment. And I wasn’t at all surprised to hear Kevin use the exact same analogy last week in a puff piece for his currently failing 74-part saga “Horizon.” The film has been getting pasted by the critics. All the more painful because Kevin put up some of his property to finance it.

In Hollywood, there is a very important term you want to stick to, and that’s OPM. Other People’s Money. But Kevin obviously wanted to continue pushing his proverbial rock up the hill, all by his lonesome. Call it stubborn, call it vanity, but don’t call Kevin late for dinner (he probably was able to snake a really good parking spot).

I have seen a bunch of pickleball players with this same stubborn, and vain, attitude. You’re so vain, Kevin, you probably think this piece is about you, don’t you? Don’t you?

Well, it’s not. What this piece is really about is Attitude.

In order to win, at anything worthwhile in life, you need to come to the game, the business, the relationship, with the right stuff. Come to it mired in your own ego and it is going to usually cost(ner) you.

In pickleball, an example of this type of person could be a banger. Someone who just stands at the baseline and drives every single ball, stubborn to do anything else. This is never successful against solid competition. Thusly, why the 3rd shot drop is so all-important when you get to an advanced level. Yet here comes another opportunity for the banger to do something differently and…

They’re trying to push the friggin’ rock up the hill again. Their mind gets stuck on insanity: repeating the same action while expecting a different result. “It’s going to be different this time, isn’t it?”

I got news for you, Kevin and Bangers. Eventually that rock is going to crush you. In pickleball terms, say, for the banger, people will just get sick of playing with you. In Costnerian terms, everyone will refuse to bank your project, and you’ll be forced to mortgage your property to pay for anything you wish to do in the future.

I want to introduce you to the Eastern philosophy term “Taoism.” Taoism is all about adhering to the way. “The way” says that certain, elemental things in life cannot be budged, no matter how hard you try to push that rock up the hill.

Reaching peak performance, or the Zone, in pickleball, or any sport, is about finding flow within the way. Finding flow within the way…

For example, let’s take the weather, and specifically, the wind. We all hate the wind, and we probably moan about it way too much, and it most likely causes our game to suffer, because of all that moaning. However, this is the same wind every player has to deal with; some just come to it with a better ATTITUDE.

Same thing when we get stuck playing with a partner we don’t care for (The Banger). Or facing off against a particularly solid player you are intimidated by. Or playing with a Franklin X when you’d rather be playing with a Dura 40. Or having to start playing in a tournament at 8:00 am. Or being upset because 4 of your club’s 16 courts are being washed during your precious morning session. Or being upset because you just found your Joola Gen 3 can’t be used in the tournament the night before it. In every instance, we cannot control, or change, any of these elements. When we try, or complain about them, what we’re doing is obstructing our pickleball mindset. And those disruptions act against our attempt to find magic in our play.

Said another way: When the mind is preoccupied, with things it can’t control, we’re clouding our ability to reach peak performance.

The philosophy of the way says there are things in life we will never be able to change. Let’s say, the stuff above, and your mother-in-law. But there is one thing we do have the power to change, and that’s ourselves, and how we respond to the rocks in our path.

If we refuse to heed the message, that the rock can’t be moved, that rock gets a little heavier every time we try to push on it, and it ends up working against us. I am a rock. I am an island. Oh, f*ck that, I would much rather be the water that flows around both! Aha! We can see what “flow” is all about so much better now with that analogy, can’t we?

In order to “be like water*,” the key is awareness. We need to be highly attuned to the things we just don’t have the power to budge, and surrender to the way of those things. We need to respect the boulder in our path, and stop wasting precious energy trying to push it up the hill. When we are so overly concerned with that boulder, the path gets muddied, and creates a big sinkhole for our mind to get sucked into. When the mind is bogged down, with frustration over the inability to control things it can’t, how much “flow” do you think we’re capable of then? “What is ‘plunger’ for, 200, Alex?”

The term wu wei also comes from Eastern philosophy and it basically means “effortlessly being in alignment with the way things are.” That’s where we want to be on the pickleball court, in total alignment with EVERYTHING! No resistance to ANYTHING! Even The Banger dude. And, hell no, it’s not easy!

The first step to alignment is acceptance of the way. The second, is to surrender the need to control the Universe (or your mother-in-law). And the third, is to find joy in our involvement, and place within the Tao.

Whether we are seeking that joy within the real world, the film world, or the pickleball world, there is no difference: There is either struggle, or flow. Struggle doesn’t help us become better players. Flow does. That’s a simple deduction that has the power to take your game, and your life, to the next level.

It’s okay to be your own man/woman, but it is extremely important to understand what you can, and can’t, control, and flow accordingly. Let the Costner’s of the world be the rock. You be the water that floats around him at lunch.

* “Be like water.” - Bruce Lee.

Here are the lyrics to the Kevin Costner song “I Am My Own Man.” If I get some time this week, I will record myself on guitar singing it and include it in the next newsletter.

Rolling down the highway
Going my way, home
I’m tired of the uphill,
The overkill on my phone

Everyone wants a piece of me
What they themselves can’t own
I’m scared of the rock I push
Coming down on me alone

Because I am my own man (You are your own man)
Walk a mile in my boots if you can, if you think you can
Because I am my own man (You are your own man)
Walk a mile in my boots if you can, if you think you can

Rolling down the highway
Doing it my way, again
Looking after my own soul
In case things don’t go as planned

I got a long life ahead of me
Gotta pace myself, ’til I find
A land where a man can be
Leaving those voices behind
A land where a man can be
Leaving those voices behind

Because I am my own man (You are your own man)
Walk a mile in my boots if you can, if you think you can
Because I am my own man (You are your own man)
Walk a mile in my boots if you can, if you think you can
If you think you can

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