How Do You Like to Play Catch with a Ball?

If you were playing catch with someone and the ball was coming toward you hard and fast, what would you do?

You could ask the other person to stop throwing the ball so hard and fast. Perhaps they would listen. Perhaps they would not.

But when your solution depends upon another person changing their behavior, you have placed the outcome of your experience into the hands of someone you cannot control.

You cannot control others or the decisions they choose to make.

However, you can control the decisions that you make in response to what is happening.

Instead of putting your expectations on the other person to change, you could simply take a few steps back. By changing your own position, the very same ball would reach you differently, and you would have a completely different experience while playing catch.

Rather than depending upon someone else to change, you can make a different decision that produces a different result.

In this way, you retain responsibility for your own choices and decisions.

You observe what is happening, understand the situation, and determine what wise decision you can make to produce a more wholesome outcome.

This principle applies to far more than playing catch with a ball.

It applies throughout life.

When you encounter something you do not particularly care to experience, rather than immediately placing expectations on another person to change, you can first ask:

“What decision can I make differently that could produce a different result?”

That is where discernment becomes important.

Discernment and Wise Decision Making

Discernment is wise decision making based in wisdom. Through discernment, a Practitioner learns to examine the available choices and determine which decision is most likely to produce a wholesome result.

Discernment is a crucial quality that needs to be cultivated as a Practitioner learns and practices The Eight Fold Path to progress toward Enlightenment. Without discernment, there would be no ability to wisely understand situations, make beneficial decisions, and develop the mind.

As wisdom develops, you become increasingly capable of seeing what is occurring without immediately reacting based on craving, desire, attachment, anger, frustration, or expectations.

Instead, you can maintain calmness and composure, understand the situation, and make a wise decision.

So, the next time you experience something in life that you do not particularly care for—whether it is a ball coming toward you hard and fast or another difficult situation—look first at the decisions available to you.

Someone might constantly behave toward you with anger, hostility, or bitterness.

You cannot control whether that person continues behaving in that way.

But you can decide how close you stand to the situation.

You can decide not to respond.

You can decide not to participate.

You can decide to walk away.

You can make different decisions that produce different results.

Wisdom Rather Than Craving

The mind still needs to eliminate its cravings, desires, and attachments for specific things to be experienced in life.

This Teaching is not about replacing one craving with another or attempting to manipulate every circumstance until life becomes exactly as you want it to be.

Rather, it is about learning to base your decision making—your discernment—in wisdom instead of craving, desire, and attachment.

The mind needs to be trained to accomplish this.

Through maintaining calmness and composure, you can make wise decisions that lead to wholesome outcomes and wholesome Kamma.

Cultivating wisdom is what allows you to increasingly make better decisions and experience better results.

Instead of continually placing expectations on what others should or should not be doing, retain responsibility for examining what is happening in your own life and determining what wise choices are available to you.

Then make the wise decision.

You Do Not Have to Catch Every Ball

There is another possibility when playing catch.

If someone throws the ball toward you hard and fast, you do not necessarily need to catch it at all.

You can step aside.

You can simply let the ball fall to the ground.

The same is true in life.

Someone may throw a degrading or diminishing comment your way, hoping to entice you into an argument, anger, hostility, or some other unwholesome experience.

You do not have to catch it.

You do not have to respond.

You do not have to participate.

You can maintain your calmness and composure, ignore the comment, and walk away.

You cannot control what another person throws your way. But you can make wise decisions about what you choose to catch.

Sometimes wisdom means taking a few steps back.

Sometimes wisdom means changing your position.

And sometimes wisdom means stepping aside completely and simply allowing the ball to fall to the ground.

You do not have to play catch with every ball that someone throws your way.