I recently had the chance to watch the new Documentary series The Last Dance, about the Chicago Bulls basketball dynasty in the 1990’s. And of course, the start was none other than the incomparable Michael Jordan.
So why title the post choir boy? Because the impression I had after watching the show was that Michael Jordan and his companions, but especially MJ himself, were somehow trapped in a Peter Pan like adolescence for the entirety of the period covered by the documentary. In other words, I am comparing MJ to a castrato, who is held in a pre-pubescent state to improve performance.
So what is the state he was in?First and foremost, MJ cared about one thing and one thing only: winning at basketball. And he was a marvel to watch. Millions of people benefited from his single-minded obsession. But an obsession with winning a game (even one that makes you lots of money) is not the mindset of a mature adult. It looks good in adolescent boys.
Aside from the obsession with basketball, a few other things hint at the possibility of a stunted psychological. First, MJ always relied on his father, and seemed to have a stronger relationship with him than with his own children. Second, when things were good, those around him commented that he was “as happy as a ten year old boy.” Now, usually that said that as if it were a good thing. And maybe it is.
But my hypothesis is that in order to succeed, professional athletes are better off sustaining the mindset of an adolescent boy. They must be obsessed with winning, it is better if they don’t get distracted by broader social issues, and ideally they are easily motivated by various rivalries.
One of the reasons I am interested in psychological maturity is that I have been asking myself lately what it means to expand our consciousness. Well, I haven’t settled on a definition, but I can tell you what it isn’t. It doesn’t mean being obsessed with winning at sports.
Instead, on some level, emotional and psychological maturity entails some degree of getting outside of ourselves and becoming truly engaged in the lives of other people. Of course, teams can be a good training ground for cooperating with others, but while the relationships can be intense, they can also be shallow. How well do the members of a sports team really know each other? How committed are they to each other’s long term success?
For example, in the documentary, MJ picked out a teammate named Scott Burrell, and made him the target of a lot of his teasing. On some level, MJ just wanted to motivate Burrell. He had the sense that Burrell didn’t have the same drive to win, and he felt like a little pushing could help get him there. But I think it’s pretty clear that his relationship with Burrell was very shallow. He didn’t really care about his teammate’s welfare.
In general, MJ seemed pretty oblivious to the needs of pretty much everyone around him. And to a degree, that is part of what made him such a sublime athlete. He was like a blank slate. Or a slate with just a single word written on it, and that word was basketball.
Now, everyone goes through phases, and MJ has probably matured quite a bit since his retirement. If I were being paid tens of millions of dollars, and idolized by hundreds of millions of people, I might try to sustain a single minded focus as well. In the short term, it pays off. But in the long term I think that as human beings we ought to strive for something greater.
