the wrinkle in the socks

It is the autumn of 1948, or maybe 1965—the year doesn't matter so much as the smell. It is the smell of floor wax, stale gymnasium air, and the distinct, musk-heavy optimism of young men who believe they are about to become immortal.

Sitting on the bleachers at UCLA are fifteen of the most physically gifted human beings in America. They are giants. They are thoroughbreds. They have been recruited by every major university in the country, and they have arrived here, in Los Angeles, to play basketball for a man who is rumored to be a wizard.

They are vibrating with adrenaline. They want a ball. They want to run. They want to dunk something so hard that the physics of the universe briefly pauses to applaud them.

In walks John Wooden. He does not look like a wizard. He looks like a high school English teacher who is worried he left his iron on. He is holding a rolled-up program. He blows a whistle.

He does not tell them to run laps. He does not draw a complex play on a chalkboard that involves flanking maneuvers. He tells them to take off their shoes. Then, he tells them to take off their socks.

You can imagine the confusion. These are 19-year-old boys. They are overflowing with testosterone and arrogance. And this polite man in a cardigan is asking to see their bare feet. It feels less like a championship training camp and more like a humiliating visit to the podiatrist.

Then, for the next fifteen minutes, John Wooden teaches them how to put the socks back on.

He is excruciatingly specific. He demonstrates how to pull the tube up the calf. He shows them how to smooth the material over the heel. He makes them run their fingers over the toes to ensure there is not a single fold, crease, or rogue thread. "Wrinkles cause blisters," he tells them, with the gravity of a man announcing a declaration of war. "Blisters cause you to change the way you run. Changing the way you run causes a sprained ankle. And a sprained ankle means you cannot play. If you cannot play, we lose."

He waits while they do it. If a player leaves a crease, Wooden makes him take the sock off and start over. Only when the socks are pristine—smooth as the marble of a Michelangelo statue—do they move on to the shoes.

It was the most boring, pedantic start to a season imaginable. It was also the reason they won ten national championships.

Most of us know this story as a quirky piece of sports trivia, a parable about "sweating the small stuff." But we miss the real genius of it because we are too busy looking at the socks. We should be looking at the philosophy of the mistake.

Consider, for a moment, how we handle our own blisters.

When I stumble in life—when I lose my temper, or miss a deadline, or accidentally sign an email to my boss "Love, Me" instead of "Best, Me"—I do not look for a wrinkle. I do not check the fabric of my day.

Instead, I immediately convene a grand jury in the center of my skull.

We all have this roommate living in our heads. He is a small, petty man who wears a powdered wig and holds a gavel that is far too large for his hands. He has been there since you were twelve. He has a terrifying memory and absolutely no sense of proportion.

If I were one of Wooden’s players, and I developed a blister in the fourth quarter, my internal monologue wouldn't be about cotton blends. It would be a federal indictment.

“State of the Universe vs. The Defendant. The charge is Incompetence, with a secondary charge of Being Generally A Disappointment To Your Ancestors.”

The Judge bangs the gavel. “You have a blister because you are soft! You have a blister because you are fundamentally unlovable! You are failing this team because you are the kind of person who deserves to have sore feet!”

The trial lasts four seconds. The verdict is in. Guilty. As always. The sentence is usually three to five years of staring at the ceiling at 3:00 a.m., replaying the mistake in high-definition 4K video.

This is how most of us live. We treat our failures as crimes to be prosecuted rather than mechanical puzzles to be solved. We are obsessed with the morality of our errors.

If you snap at your spouse after a long Tuesday, the Judge in your head doesn't care about context. He cares about character. “You yelled because you are an Angry Person. You are turning into your father. Soon you will be shouting at clouds.”

Case closed. The verdict is in. You are bad.

But notice what happens when the Judge takes over. The inquiry stops. If the problem is that you are "bad," there is no solution other than to magically become "good," which—let’s be honest—is unlikely to happen before dinner. So you wallow. You feel shame. And shame is a very heavy coat to wear in the summer. It makes you sweaty and irritable, which, ironically, makes it 90% more likely that you’ll yell at your spouse again tomorrow.

Now, look back at the man in the cardigan.

Wooden didn’t care about the player’s soul in that moment; he cared about the player’s epidermal layer. If a player was limping, Wooden didn’t scream at them to pick up the slack. That’s lazy coaching. That’s what a bad gym teacher does while smoking a cigarette behind the bleachers.

Wooden knelt down. He untied the shoe. He peeled back the sock. He looked for the wrinkle.

He knew that the blister wasn't a moral failing. It was a mechanical breakdown. The fabric had bunched up.

This is the shift that changes everything. It is the move from the Judge to the Coach.

The Judge asks: “Who is to blame for this disaster?”

The Coach asks: “Where is the bunching?”

This sounds simple, but it is incredibly difficult to do in practice because it requires us to abandon the drama of self-loathing. There is something weirdly satisfying about beating yourself up. It feels productive. It feels like we are atoning. We think, if I feel like garbage, at least I’m not letting myself off the hook.

But real accountability is boring. Real accountability is forensic.

Real accountability looks like this: "I yelled at the kids. Okay. I am not a monster, but I am a biological organism that requires fuel. Where was the wrinkle? Ah, I see it. I skipped lunch to answer emails. My blood sugar took a nosedive. Then I read a news article about the inevitable collapse of the global economy. Then I walked in the door and stepped on a Lego."

The wrinkle wasn't in your soul. The wrinkle was in your blood glucose and your foot.

The Judge leaves you with a verdict: You are a monster.

The Coach leaves you with a tactic: Eat a sandwich at 3:00 p.m. and stop reading the news in the driveway.

One of these makes you feel "virtuous" for suffering. The other one actually fixes the problem so you don't shriek at your progeny tomorrow.

We are terrified that if we put down the gavel, we will become lazy. We think the self-abuse is the only thing keeping us from devolving into people who lie on the couch eating spray cheese straight from the can. We think the whip is the only source of horsepower.

But look at the scoreboard. Wooden’s teams were the most disciplined in the history of the sport. They didn't run because they were terrified of being called "bad people." They ran because their feet didn't hurt. They ran because they had removed the friction that causes failure.

(And probably because, let’s face it: they were freak athletes.)

You are going to mess up. You are going to miss the shot. You are going to say the wrong thing at a dinner party and realize—mid-sentence—that the story you are telling is not funny, has no ending, and is possibly offensive to the host. Been there.

When that happens, you have a choice. You can let the Judge bang the gavel, sentence you to the dark cell of inadequacy, and spend the next week writing mental apology letters to everyone you’ve ever met.

Or, you can sit down on the bench, take a breath, and untie your shoe.

Penance is not practice.

Stop trying to fix your character when you just need to fix your sock.

John

Thanks for reading The Mayfly Letter.

Your support allows me to continue doing something I truly love.

John Conrad