I took a leave of absence from ESPN to write parts of this book. On the first day I sat down to write, an e-mail popped into my inbox from Erik Rydholm, who is the executive producer of both Around the Horn and Pardon the Interruption. The note included an audio file as well as a few sentences: “I wanted to pass along this sermon by the late Maurice Boyd. He preached in NYC for decades before passing in 2005. Luckily, some 600 or so of his sermons were recorded. This one is probably my favorite, and when I was listening to it again this morning, it made me think of you and Madison and this book.”
Boyd delivered this sermon, “The Fine Art of Being Imperfect,” in 1996. Apparently the Irish pastor never wrote out his sermons, but rather scribbled down a few notes and extrapolated on the ideas as he stood before his flock.
To make his point about the varying human responses to imperfection, Boyd uses three examples: Waterford crystal, pottery, and oriental rugs. At Waterford, Boyd explains, each piece of crystal is meticulously inspected, held up to the light, each surface appraised for the slightest crack or deformity. If any is spotted, the piece is immediately shattered. Boyd allows this imagery to sink in, allows the listener to picture the beautiful crystal being smashed against a hard object, the pieces swept away, punishment for a defect nearly invisible to the human eye. Then Boyd urges us to consider the slight space between these two wildly different outcomes. He says, “Notice how close perfection is to despair.”
Then he moves on to pottery. As a potter’s hands move over clay, shaping the malleable form, occasionally a mistake is made, an unwanted alteration to the vision. But usually the potter will not throw away the clay; she will attempt to reshape the piece around the mistake, as if it had never happened.
Then Boyd turns to the weavers who create the world’s most beautiful rugs. They spend hours creating designs by hand, and during this painstaking process the shapes and angles often become lopsided, asymmetrical. However, this asymmetry is not considered a mistake to be eradicated or smoothed out. In fact, it is the opposite: this imperfection becomes the rug’s beauty, its uniqueness. This rug is unlike any other, and that is what makes it a coveted work. Boyd’s message asks a single question of his listeners: In which way do we view imperfection?
And, again: Notice how close perfection is to despair.
CHAPTER 8
The Meeting
Madison had returned to Penn two days early to see Jackie’s first Ivy League game. But she also wanted to be on campus without obligations, to know what it felt like to walk through the streets, across the quad, without a grueling workout to get to—or even a class. Perhaps she would see Penn differently, fresher somehow. She wanted so badly for this semester to be different. She had made herself a promise: bring a different attitude to second semester.
That night, Maddy opened the notes application on her repaired iPhone and typed out her mantra:
new mindset
new everything
i can do this
i will do this
you CHOOSE your fate
willing to give it another chance
DON’T LOOK BACK
LOOK FORWARD
SETBACKS ARE NEEDED TO GET STRONGER
transferring is not an option
And if this forced positivity didn’t work, somewhere on the back burner resided a different solution. But maybe Maddy wouldn’t need that. Quitting track, she believed, would change everything, would be the jump start she needed to see the world differently. And not even drastically differently, just more like the way she had before, in high school.
She closed the notes application. She had said goodbye to her dad at the game, said goodbye to Ingrid a few hours later, after they’d watched the men play. Now she was back in her Penn dorm room—alone. It was nearly midnight on Saturday night.
She opened her MacBook, launched Pages, and began typing.
Although this has been extremely difficult to put into words, I’m going to do my best to explain my first semester at Penn and where it’s led me.
Before I begin I just want to say I have the utmost respect and admiration for you as a coach and a person and that I know I wouldn’t be at this school if it weren’t for you. I also want you to know that you aren’t at fault for anything negative I’ve felt over the past couple months in any way.
Here goes.
Yesterday was the first day since early September that I felt genuinely happy, that I actually felt like myself again, and that I felt like Penn MIGHT actually be the right place for me and that I felt excited to be here.
Yesterday was the first time since late October that I actually enjoyed running and really really wanted to run.
Yesterday was the first day in many, many months that I woke up feeling faithful and optimistic about my future since I knew I had reached a decision.
Maddy named the file “for dolan” and saved it to her Documents folder, alongside the papers she had written during first semester. In that folder there was also a document named “good quotes” to which she contributed whenever she stumbled upon a quote or poem she wanted to remember. The first entry on the page was from Helen Keller: “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.” The next two on the page were similar, about how only those who leave home or get lost ever really find home or themselves. The final quote on the page was from Anne Frank: “Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.”