He’s 10, and he’s surrounded by other kids in full uniforms — it’s during a match, maybe it’s halftime. And he’s just juggling the ball with his left foot. The other kids are standing close. He doesn’t seem to notice. He just watches the ball, keeps it up, foot, knee, foot, knee. He looks transfixed. You get an impression of someone so absorbed by the movement of the ball that it occupies his entire mind. That everything outside the connection he has with the ball is not quite real. Not that it’s menacing or unpleasant; just that it’s sort of to one side. He’s not interested in other people and their egos or in whether he’s being watched. He’s interested in the ball, in making it do what he wants. It’s an end to him, not a means.
- Brian Phillips, on Lionel Messi in The Ball is the End
Often, the pursuit of excellence seems in tension with joy. Many of the best things in life lie on the other side of pushing oneself to the limit, of sacrifice, of a degree of suffering. But if we manage to pull real, authentic enjoyment out of the practice, the apparent trade-off is revealed to be a false dichotomy. Make no mistake: Messi has suffered through parts of his journey. Yet there was also joy — not just while hoisting trophies, but also in the millions of little moments in which his skills were developed. He was perhaps simply fortunate to discover this productive obsession. I ask myself to what extent I can seek or cultivate such fulfilling internal motivation within the minutiae of my day-to-day life.