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Depression
If Life Gives You Lemons, Go Throw a Strike or a Spare
Personal Perspective: There's a way back into the game when you're down.
Updated April 13, 2024 Reviewed by Ray Parker
Key points
- Bad news cannot only knock you down; it can steal joy from your life.
- Sometimes, it's hard to figure out what to do next.
- There are many ways to recapture some control in your life, including bowling.
I recently had the joy knocked out of me over a medical issue that was going to put an added layer of caution into my life. I’m not a big fan of cautious living, but sometimes caution is warranted.
The need for caution has to do with living with a single kidney for over 20 years and the remaining one being a bit compromised. In the past, I have had to seriously give up some activities I love, like riding a bike, cross-country skiing, and ice skating, along with a few things I had hoped to do someday, like learning to ride a paddleboard and playing soccer and baseball with my grandchildren.
In short, I had to come to grips with giving up any activity where I might fall or bruise my back.
In reviewing all the past do-nots in my life, my urologist threw in the final clinker: getting jostled in a crowd. His list also included going to shopping malls, riding in crowded subway cars, buses, and elevators, and attending big outdoor events like concerts.
That no-getting-jostled-in-a-crowd took the last wisp of joy remaining in my lungs. Although never a lover of crowds, I have been known to join in on a good, old-fashioned protest march when the need arise—so many things to protest these days, so little time—which is also now absolutely out of the question.
When I was firmly told by my doctor to be even more vigilant than I have been in the past in order to protect my remaining kidney from bruises and bumps, I was overwhelmed by both the new changes and the potential consequences of not making them.
As my urologist put it: “If you bruise or damage your remaining kidney, you could lose it.”
When the Sadness Overwhelms You, Go Bowling
Fortunately, my doctor hadn’t mentioned bowling.
Not that I am what you might call a bowler. I am someone who has bowled from time to time and thought it an okay thing to do at a birthday party.
The day after this rather sobering medical appointment, I was still having trouble finding my good humor. In fact, I was feeling a bit fragile and broken. That’s when my husband suggested we go bowling.
Ten pins 60 feet away. A rather heavy ball. Funny shoes. No one standing behind me who might bump or hit my fragile kidney. Why not?
Everyone throws a gutter ball on occasion, even the best of bowlers. (At least, that’s what I told myself.) If you knock them all down with the first ball in a frame, you get to credit yourself in that frame with the next two balls you bowl: a kind of bonus to a lucky throw that lets you ride your momentary wave of success. If you get a spare, knocking them all down in two balls, which I think is harder than getting that strike thing, you get to add in the next ball you bowl as a bonus to that frame’s score.
But the real bonus in the game is the sense that it’s just you against the things standing in your way. There’s also that satisfying sound of the crack and scatter of the pins when your thrown ball knocks them down.
That heavy ball, those pins standing there taunting you to knock them down, is a control thing: I figured that out. But it’s a game that lets you keep trying, frame after frame, to get it right. There are no three-strikes-and-you're-out rule. No penalty or enforced sitting on the sidelines for the occasional gutterball, cuss word, bad form, or victory dance. If it's your turn, you get to play: no penalty, no judgment.
There’s a great scene in an episode of Suits where Alex takes his socially and physically awkward colleague, Louis Litt, bowling. Faye has just ousted Litt as managing partner of his beloved law firm, and he is demoralized. Alex watches Louis throw a couple of gutterballs and tries to coach him on the finer points of the game. Each suggestion brings on another gutterball until Louis says something about being made fun of as a child and once being filled with rage.
Alex suggests that Louis lean into that long-ago rage and imagine that those ten pins at the end of the alley are really Faye laughing at him.
The next ball Louis throws is a strike, then another and another until he finishes in a balletic victory dance with a perfect score: a 300. That’s not something I’m aiming for. It’s not that it’s beyond my reach, but that it doesn’t matter.
What matters is what Alex said to Louis when he bowled that 300: “After all that has happened to us, we’re still standing.”
I will be fine. Thanks for asking.
I’m still standing.
