A little bit of Zen (112)

“The first man at the finishing-line is the one who marks it out.”  

GW

Set your own goals. Measure 'progress' and 'success' only against yourself. Remember: you are always 'first' in the only league that matters.

A little bit of Zen (111)

 

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."

Douglas Adams

Dear Douglas was one of the only people I've had a huge fanboy crush on (when I was a boy....), having grown up loving the original radio version of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I was lucky enough to meet him a couple of times when I was a college student. An incredibly wise and funny man - gone far too soon.

A little bit of Zen (110)

"An only life can take so long to climb

Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never..."

Philip Larkin - from his poem 'Aubade'

Yes, unfortunately a bad start can wreck your whole season. Many people just give up and quit the game when this happens. But, however wretchedly things may have gone in the opening couple of gameweeks, however hopeless your season's prospects may now be, it is possible to still find things to enjoy in the weekly challenge. As I always say, you will find more satisfaction in the game - and gradually improve at it - if you concentrate not on any arbitrary end-goal of points or rank finishes, but on the process - all the individual decisions you make, and how you reach them.

A little bit of Zen (109)

 

"I need ammunition - not a ride."

Volodymyr Zelenskyy

The Ukrainian President's concise and stupendously badass response to Joe Biden's offer of sending American Special Forces to help safely extract him from the country in the hours after Putin's invasion began in February 2022 should be an inspiration to all of us - in FPL, as in other areas of life. So many FPL managers we see on the online forums are just looking for a safe way out, for a free ride - 'Please, tell me who to pick.'  They should be looking for ideas, information, perspectives: things that will help them develop their thinking about the game, and enable them to start making better decisions for themselves.  That is what I try to do when I respond to such online queries. 

I never want to tell people who they should pick; I want to try to help people understand how to make better picks. You need 'ammunition', not a ride.

Here we go again....!!

 

"We must imagine Sisyphus happy."

Albert Camus

This game we so love and hate does seem very like the famous mythical punishment in Hell: endless toil, constant setback... ultimate futility.

We must learn to value the effort expended for its own sake, to celebrate the endeavour to achieve, rather than achievement itself.

Only about 14 hours to go now until the first kick-off of the new season:

 Arsenal v Coventry - at 8 pm, UK time. 

Stand by your boulders....

[Yes, this is a re-post from last year and the year before. But it is so inescapably appropriate that I'm going to use it every year.  I have a deep connection with the Myth of Sisyphus.]

A little bit of Zen (108)

 

"Football is the most important of Life's least important things."

Arrigo Sacchi

What is it  with sports coaches and their penchant for paradoxes?

A little bit of Zen (107)

 

"The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true."

Robert Oppenheimer

"I'm kind of an optimistic pessimist: I always hope for the least worst outcome."

GW

A little bit of Zen (106)

"You can count how many seeds are in the apple, but not how many apples are in the seed."

Ken Kesey

Kesey, one of the key figures of the 1960s counter-culture movement in California, and for a time a leading proponent of experimentation with LSD, was also a very fine writer - perhaps best known for his early-60s novel 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest', which was immediately adapted into a very successful Broadway play, which in turn would eventually become one of the most celebrated Oscar-winning films of the 1970s.

A little bit of Zen (105)

 

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."

Albert Einstein

A little bit of Zen (104)

 

“Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.”

Arthur Schopenhauer

You don't have to tell England football fans that, Martin.

Another addition to the list of famous people we didn't realise had played Fantasy Premier League....

A little bit of Zen (103)

"Every ending marks a new beginning. All things pass away, but new things arise in their place. The world is constantly replenished."

GW

The 2026 World Cup is nearly done. Let us hope we have a magnificent Final on Sunday to cap what has been a magnificent tournament - probably the best ever in the competition's history. 

Messi is bowing out in style; perhaps Kane also (I doubt if he'll still be around in 2030). [Let us not dwell upon Cristiano - he should have retired from international football 4 or 5 years ago, to avoid tarnishing his legacy...]  But new stars are rising in their place; I look forward to seeing more from the likes of Ismael Saibari, Pau Cubarsi, Antonio Nusa, Johan Manzambi, Haissem Hassan, Gilberto Mora, and Nico Paz. There will be so many new wonders to enjoy at the next tournament. I can hardly wait...

A little bit of Zen (102)

"All that matters is today. Yesterday is merely information and tomorrow we think about when it arrives."

Jürgen Klopp

A little bit of Zen (101)

"Everywhere is walking-distance - if you have the time."

Steven Wright

A great line from one of my favourite comedians. Deeper than you think... 

For me, the wisdom of it lies in recognising how much our thinking is constrained by the categories we unconsciously impose upon things.

A little bit of Zen (100)

"The true harvest of my daily life is... intangible. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched."

Henry David Thoreau  -  'Walden' 

A little bit of Zen (99)

 

"Intuition is cosmic fishing. You feel a nibble, then you've got to hook the fish."

Richard Buckminster Fuller

"We are all following hunches. We need to develop an intuition about which hunches are actually the good ones - hunches about hunches!"

GW

A little bit of Zen (98)

 

"Every beginning contains the seed of its own ending. Enjoy the things that are, when they are. Do not regret them, when they are not."

GW

The World Cup will be over before we know it, it will go by in a flash. We must try to give it our full attention while it lasts, try to sup every possible drop of joy out of it.

A little bit of Zen (97)

 

“If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.”

William Blake  -  'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"

A little bit of Zen (96)

"It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play."

Dizzy Gillespie

"You can never know what are the 'best' decisions to make. You just have to try to avoid making too many of the most obvious mistakes."

GW

 

The ultimate REFRAME

I was asked - yet again - on one of the forums the other week what my rank is. And instead of just ignoring the enquiry, or castigating the questioner as an ignorant lout, I came up with this flippant response.... which I find contains a kernel of important truth. This is not silly bragging or empty, delusional consolation; it is a valuable reminder of where our true focus should lie.

"I am FIRST in the only league that matters."

This is always true, for all of us. Because the only competition that truly matters is the struggle with ourselves - to do the best we can, and to constantly seek to improve on what that 'best' can be.

Fretting about your 'Overall Rank', or even your status in mini-leagues, is a VANITY of VANITIES. It is not what the game of FPL should really be about.

A little bit of Zen (95)

"Roads are made for journeys, not destinations."

Kong Qiu ('Confucius')

"Money's just something you throw off the the back of a train..."

Tom Waits - 'Long Way Home'

Money, after all, is just a crystallization of effort, a convenient medium for translating effort into different material benefits. But money, like effort, like all manifestations of the material world, is ephemeral: we use it, and it is gone forever. Nothing lasts; but the true value of a thing arises precisely from the fact that it can only be experienced for a fixed amount of time. The value of an FPL season is not found in the numbers recorded against your name at the end of it, but in the memories of all the doubts and struggles and difficult decisions grappled with over the past nine months.