Strategy

So I'm involved in two fantasy football leagues which I am enjoying quite a bit.  Most people who know me would think me the least likely person to become involved in this sort of past time, and normally I would agree.  I am a casual football fan at best and see the sport as no different from any other leisure activity.  For me it is much like watching a movie - when its over, its over.  I don't think much about teams and standings and individual players.

Then what's the appeal of fantasy football?  The answer is a little complex, but for the most part its not really about football, its about statistics and strategy.  It's the strategy element that has the most interest for me.

A friend of mine, a new player in the league, said she uses strategy based on both Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" and the board game Risk.  Okay, sounds interesting.  Since I've rekindled my love of the martial arts recently I've also revisited Sun Tzu, Miayomoto Musashi's The Book of Five Rings, Yamamoto Tsunetomo's Hagakure.

They are all books on warfare, strategy, and the proper way of life for the samurai.  They haven't been all that helpful in moving me out of 9th place in my league, but they have been very useful in helping me shape a new path for my life.  I'm not one for following another's path blindly or in its entirety, but you can draw wisdom and understanding from many sources - with some offering unique insight and some reinforcing the ideas of others; all helpful in navigating this strange and wonderful life.  Here are some of my favorite strategies of simply being:

From The Book of Five Rings:

•  
• Do not think dishonestly. 
• The Way is in training. 
• Become acquainted with every art. 
• Know the Ways of professions. 
• Distinguish between gain and loss in worldly matters. 
• Develop intuitive judgement and understanding for everything. 
• Perceive those things which cannot be seen. 
• Pay attention even to trifles. 
• Do nothing which is of no use. 

 

"In strategy your spiritual bearing must not be any different from normal. Both in fighting and in everyday life you should be determined though calm. Meet the situation without tenseness yet not recklessly, your spirit settled yet unbiased. Even when your spirit is calm do not let your body relax, and when your body is relaxed do not let your spirit slacken. Do not let your spirit be influenced by your body, or your body be influenced by your spirit. Be neither insufficiently spirited nor over spirited. An elevated spirit is weak and a low spirit is weak. Do not let the enemy see your spirit."

 

“You can only fight the way you practice” 

 "Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is your victory over lesser men.”

 “Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world”  

“There is nothing outside of yourself that can ever enable you to get better, stronger, richer, quicker, or smarter. Everything is within. Everything exists. Seek nothing outside of yourself.”  

“The ultimate aim of martial arts is not having to use them” 

Home

I recently took a trip to my hometown, which is a weird experience since it has stopped being my home so long ago.  Yet, it does function as a container of memories and a lens into the past when various earlier versions of myself spent time reading, walking through the woods like some miniature Thoreau, and generally brooding about life and my part in it.

I come from a very picturesque hometown which has fallen on hard times of late.  Here's a picture of the town in its autumnal glory:

The idea of home has always been a complicated mix of ideas and emotions.  Is it a physical structure?  a location? or even an emotion?  Can you find yourself more at home at a place where you only just arrived than in a place where you spent the best part of your life?  Can you live your life in a place and never consider it home?  Can you have more than one home?

There really isn't a single definitive answer to what constitutes "home".  It seems to be defined by the individual and is contextually dependent.  There are stories,  A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, comes to mind, where home and all the sentiment that comes with it is located in a slum.  So clearly there's a lot that goes into the term "home" - so let's see what some writers and thinkers have to offer:

“I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.”
― Beryl Markham, West with the Night

“Home wasn't a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together. Not a place, but a moment, and then another, building on each other like bricks to create a solid shelter that you take with you for your entire life, wherever you may go.”
― Sarah Dessen, What Happened to Goodbye

“The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I always wondered why the makers leave housekeeping and cooking out of their tales. Isn't it what all the great wars and battles are fought for -- so that at day's end a family may eat together in a peaceful house?”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Voices

“You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame, back home to exile, to escape to Europe and some foreign land, back home to lyricism, to singing just for singing's sake, back home to aestheticism, to one's youthful idea of 'the artist' and the all-sufficiency of 'art' and 'beauty' and 'love,' back home to the ivory tower, back home to places in the country, to the cottage in Bermude, away from all the strife and conflict of the world, back home to the father you have lost and have been looking for, back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time--back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.”
― Thomas Wolfe

“Happiness doesn't lie in conspicuous consumption and the relentless amassing of useless crap. Happiness lies in the person sitting beside you and your ability to talk to them. Happiness is clear-headed human interaction and empathy. Happiness is home. And home is not a house-home is a mythological conceit. It is a state of mind. A place of communion and unconditional love. It is where, when you cross its threshold, you finally feel at peace.”
― Dennis Lehane

Following up on Lehane's idea of home as a something that is created, formed, rather than established, here's a clip from the cut TV show Firefly.  I offer this as an example of people creating their own sense of home - even on a spaceship in the dark, hostile emptiness of space, for two reasons: One, it is a really good example.  Two: I liked Firefly and don't mind seeing a clip every so often - maybe it simply reminds me of my own home in some way.