Multiple Takes

I have to admit that golf is one of the most boring sports to watch on TV (probably even more so in person). Half the time, I can’t keep up with what’s going on, with the coverage hopping around from one hole to another. But sometimes I’ll still manage to find something to amuse me. Like whenever I used to watch Jack Nicklaus walk up to putt the ball. He’d line his feet up, level his putter, look at the hole, take little mini-steps up and down with his feet, level his putter, look at the hole, take little mini-steps up and down with his feet, level……you get the picture. Sooner or later, after what seemed like forever, the golfing great would finally get around to hitting the ball. And usually with success! But seeing him standing there like that, doing multiple takes at the hole and continually repositioning himself, cracked me up. But I think it was a lot more than a nervous habit on the part of Nicklaus. He most likely had long before learned that you can’t assimilate everything with one visual sweep; taking a mental picture of something and then looking back can bring to light important things that might have otherwise gone unnoticed, as well as enhance your concentration.

And the most glaring example of this need to perform multiple takes in my life is when I’m out in traffic driving. It used to be, when the light turned green, that I prided myself on having the quickest reflexes around, immediately hitting the gas pedal and surging ahead. No more! Do to the ever-increasing recklessness of some of my fellow drivers, I now habitually pause to check whether there are any fools disposed to stretch the light the other way (even though it’s already red for them). And lately, I’m not just doing my multiple takes looking around the intersection; I’m also looking down the road to see if there isn’t some driver who might be so distracted that they hadn’t noticed the light had changed for their direction. And for pulling out of a side street onto a road, multiple takes have always been a necessity, both to notice motorcycles, bicycles, and pedestrians, as well as to account for the fact that my car, like others, has certain blind spots that may conceal something at first glance.

There is also a more subtle, longer-range kind of multiple take when one wants to gage what is going on around in the world. But this time the take is not done through space, but rather through time, through the use of history. We may look around us, and at first glance, things may seem normal in our political, social, and economic surroundings. But armed with a sound knowledge of history, we can then keep reexamining our world and discern patterns in the present that fit historical patterns indicating trends in one direction or another. The better of a historical background we possess (like the skill of the golfer or driver), the more effective our multiple takes on our contemporary society will be, and the better able we will be to communicate our observations and conclusions to others.