Shoot Your Shot

I love the anecdote at the end of this article about Kobe Bryant's arrival in the NBA.  He had famously air-balled four straight shots at the end of a critical playoff game, costing his team the series.  A local press guy saw Kobe after the game and offered him some words of encouragement so as not to hang his head down.  Defiantly, this was Kobe's response:

“He looked at me, he kind of sneered. He was like, ‘I’d take every damn one of those shots again.’ There was no reluctance or remorse, or anything. It was like, ‘Fuck that. I would take every one of those shots again.’”

I'm not here to litigate Kobe Bryant's career or mentality.  He was a complex person with more than his share of fans and naysayers.  His induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame, posthumously, earlier this month, has elicited all of those takes.

My point today is that in life, sometimes we have to shoot our shot.  And that means sometimes we will miss.  Sometimes, we will miss badly, over and over again.  

If we are afraid of the consequence of this, we will never do anything of substance in our lives.  For anything worth doing requires making mistakes, being booed, and feeling doubt creep up from deep within you.  None of those feel good.  We never want to choose those outcomes.  But we must be ok with bearing them.  For if we are afraid, we won't shoot.  And if we don't shoot, we'll never score.

I cannot help but process this life lesson from my perspective as a dad.  At the very core of raising my kids is the need to help them to be ok going out there and taking the shot.  Which means providing a loving environment so they know they are accepted and embraced regardless of the outcome.  It also means pushing up against their natural tendencies to want to shield themselves from the pain of failure and embarrassment.  

Kobe was an outlier, I will acknowledge this.  Still, we can all channel a little of his fearlessness.  He wanted to take every one of those shots.  Do we?