Waiting for Godot
Estragon struggles with his boots, and after a few moments he sighs "Nothing to be done." His friend Vladimir muses "I'm beginning to come 'round to that opinion. All my life I've tried to put it from me, saying Vladimir, be reasonable, you haven't yet tried everything. And I resumed the struggle."
So begins Samuel Beckett's iconic existential play "Waiting for Godot."
Aside from the occasional lengthy monologue, it's a play marked by quips that become repartee for Gogo and Didi, their endearing nicknames, and with others they encounter. The dialogue moves quickly, or at least that was how I read it, years ago when I was a university student.
In truth, Beckett captured well the changing rhythm of everyday life - sometimes clipped and spitfire, sometimes pensive, slow and tedious. Life, he seemed to say, is what happens when we keep waiting for someone who never comes.
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Rose severely injured his left ACL on April 28th 2012, in the Bulls' first game of the playoffs. He had had an injury-plagued season, but the team welcomed his return once again and looked to make a deep run in the post-season.
It was a shock, to say the least, and while the Bulls had the talent to capture that first series against the 76ers, they didn't recover quickly enough, psychologically speaking, and entered the off-season in a sudden thud.
Early last month, ESPN writer Melissa Isaacson broke the news that Rose's physician cleared him to return to the lineup. In other words, physically he could resume competitive basketball play.
What ensued, however, was a veritable farce, played out in the media and among fans.
Weeks after that pivotal report, there is still no Rose on the floor. I began to think about him in the vein of "Waiting for Godot." Godot is a real figure, referenced as such in the play, but because we don't ever meet him, he might as well be mythic or symbolic.
Day after day, since that report, there is inevitably one reporter at least asking Coach Tom Thibodeau, 'When is Derrick coming back?' The no-nonsense coach responds, duly patient and unrelentingly consistent: 'Derrick will come back, when he's ready to come back. There is no timetable for his return.'
But the question comes back, in its own ridiculously laughable persistence. The fact is, we don't know the answer, and apparently Rose doesn't, either. He has left it to God to decide when. In an American culture, characterized by certainty, logic and precision, waiting yet not knowing are positively maddening.
We're in a "Waiting for Godot" existential drama vis-a-vis Derrick Rose.
Losing the Past
Motivational posts on Facebook tell us to live in the present. Don't dwell on the past, and don't worry about the future. Fine. But our present is very much anchored in the past. So take that past away, and we live as if we stand on sand, at the waters' edge, and the ocean draws the sand rapidly out from under our feet as the wave retreats.
Estragon and Vladimir lose their grip on the past, when they aren't sure if they were there yesterday. For a moment, they entertain the possibility that Godot came, but that they missed him. Also, Estragon finally pulls off his boots, because they hurt his feet, but then the next day he forgets where he put them.
Moreover, as if to cause more discombobulation for the two friends, a boy comes by, one day, with a message from Godot: 'He will come tomorrow.' But that boy returns the next day, denies that he was there before, and reassures the gentlemen that Godot will come tomorrow.
You see the existential angst of this. Without the past, the continuity of time is broken, and tomorrow is always tomorrow, and of course tomorrow will never be today. If Godot is coming tomorrow, but tomorrow never comes, then really Godot never comes.
Pardon my language, but it's a mindfuck, isn't it.
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Rose had surgery on May 12th 2012, and soon thereafter his surgeon, Dr. Brian Cole, offered this report:
"We're at this point very optimistic. We think of recovery as the long process that's in stages. But the short answer is[,] the time frame[,] we believe an athlete of this caliber generally requires[,] is about eight to 12 months. Sometimes shorter, sometimes longer.
"While he will be at hopefully a very high level at 12 months, it still may take slightly longer for him to be at his pre-injury level. That's not uncommon for athletes of this caliber."
In our eagerness, we've forgotten what he said. In actuality, however, we're well within this time frame, and Rose is very much on track with his recovery. We want him back so much that we neglect to take heed.
Reporters, really, should stop asking Thibodeau their single-tracked question. But then we fans would have no means for expressing that very question that sits on our tongues on a daily basis. So because they are our mouthpieces, reporters have to keep asking.
When we step back from this, we see instead that it's less a commentary on Rose, his injury or return, and more on us, just as "Waiting for Godot" is the quintessential allegory for Western Man.
- How we cannot tolerate waiting. Recall that prayer: 'God give me patience, and give it to me now!"
- How disconcerting it is not to know. Some of us even turn to science, because it offers a reliable heuristic for knowing.
- We dread wanting something, but not getting it. It's the ultimate taunt to dangle a carrot in front of us, but to give us no opportunity to grab it.
In WH Auden's lyrical yet mournful poem "In Memory of WB Yeats," he writes "For poetry makes nothing happen." In a way, he wishes, like many of us, that art had the power to bring his beloved fellow poet back or perhaps halt death altogether.
So, in a similar vein, we might come away from "Waiting for Godot" with the dissatisfying sigh that nothing happened. Art is no grand mechanism, after all, for making anything happen. There is wisdom in both Beckett and Auden.
No one can command anyone to recover. No physician, psychologist or coach can hasten the time it takes for any injured athlete to return. The body, and mind as well, recover on their own timeline. We would like to believe that with treatment or practice, we shorten that timeline.
But do we really?
Football player, Adrian Peterson, with the Vikings, also suffered an ACL injury. He came back apparently sooner than expected, and ended up having a season so awesome last year, that he won MVP honors.
He seemed to have pushed the envelope, so why can't Rose? Why can't someone grab him by the shoulders, shake sense into the young man's head, and demand that he get back on the court? He's medically cleared, isn't he?
I argue that whether it's curtailing recovery time, as Peterson seemed to have done, or staying on recovery time, as Rose is clearly doing, these athletes abide by laws of nature. They can only do what nature allows them to do, and they cannot do what nature doesn't allow them to do. It is simply not true that anything is possible. Some things are, but not everything.
Whether it's a mental thing or something else, Rose is not yet ready to come back. Even opposing players like Carmelo Anthony are rallying to his defense. We can talk and post, we can criticize and cajole, and we can challenge and question, and still nothing happens.
For me, Thibodeau is the epitome of reality. It's been an up-and-down season, and more injuries have plagued the Bulls across several players. Even Rose's backup, Kirk Hinrich, has had to sit out games at many stretches. They've had their stirring, improbable victories against elite teams, like the Heat and Knicks, but they've also descended to the level of the lowly Pistons and Raptors with losses.
Regardless, though, the game has continued. Psychologically, some of the Bulls players may have switched off, at certain points in the season, while waiting for Rose, but Thibodeau pushes them back on. He does so, as if to say 'Life goes on.'
The Bulls' vaunted defense has been rather porous this year. Their offense is so vanilla, as to be relatively easy for opponents to defend. Thibodeau watches like a hawk from the sidelines, and scowls and grimaces when mistakes on the court befuddle him. But he, of all people, never stopped coaching, just because he, too, wants his superstar player to come back.
The game goes on, and it's a marvelous game at that, full of thrills and spills.
What happens in the present, then, for Estragon and Vladimir is far from nothing. There is conversation between them that, as the play progresses, cements their friendship further. There is the farcical hat exchange between them, which is light-hearted relief; and this is countered by the cruelty Pozzo inflicts on Lucky, laced with all the dramatic consternation and heartbreak that human slavery brings about. There is news that Godot beats one hired hand but not the other.
For better or for worse, life inviolably happens.
Acknowledging the Inevitable
In "Hamlet," the Danish Prince agonizes over what to do about the murder of his father and his after-death visitations. Unlike "Waiting for Godot," this Shakespearean play is laden with lengthy monologue, twists of metaphor, and literally a play-within-a-play.
But it was in the following passage that Hamlet signals to us, how he has finally reconciled not so much what he is going to do, but more specifically what fate has in store for him.
Not a whit, we defy augury. There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.So where Godot stops, Rose goes on. That is, he will come back. It's a matter of when, not a question of if. Of that, we can be sure, just as Hamlet is sure about the providential fall of a sparrow.
Waiting for Salvation
Beckett denied religious allusions in his play, as some thought, for example, that "Godot" was a pun for "God."
Despite such denial, however, I do believe such allusions are part of the play. You see, as existential in nature, and therefore a human drama, "Waiting for Godot" speaks to our very notion of savior. We Christians have Jesus Christ, for example, and we wait for his second coming. He is endowed with powers to effect our salvation.
Rose is unquestionably a superstar athlete, and his return to the court will undoubtedly improve the Bulls' play as a whole. Exactly how much improvement, we won't know until he actually returns.
But my points are these:
- I've mentioned earlier: How well each of us acknowledges the unknown and reconciles our waiting speaks volumes about who we are as individuals and what we are as humankind.
- I want to pose this sensitive question: How much of a savior is Christ? Just as I wonder how much of an impact Rose alone will actually have, when it comes to the Bulls' ultimate goal of winning a championship, I ask, How do we really know what kind of salvation we can expect to get, at the end of it all?
What makes Waiting for Godot and Waiting for Derrick Rose a farce, at least in certain respects, is the foolishness of endowing either gentleman with savior powers, even mythic or symbolic. Both are human, and both can only do so much for those who wait for them.
Reconciling the Wait
Maybe just tacitly, Estragon and Vladimir do reconcile the fact of Godot never coming, simply by virtue of their going on with their lives and drawing unwittingly on their friendship, no matter whom they encounter.
If you follow the Bulls, then you know that the players have drawn closer to each other, in Rose's absence, and have proven their heart on the court and their belief in what their coach himself believes in: Namely, in any given game, no matter who's able to play, they have more than enough to win.
We don't know exactly how the rest of the season and playoffs are going to shake out. We're still in the midst of this dramatic play. But Rose himself has warned us that he may sit out the season, and come back next year, instead.
My faith and belief are in the reality and the continuity of our situation, and I am not wedded to any particular date for Rose's return. I love basketball, and the Bulls make for great drama, and for this I don't have to wait.
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Rose will come tomorrow. That could be tomorrow-tomorrow, or tomorrow-next year.
Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!
Ron Villejo, PhD
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