Archery – Life Lessons Developed from a Passion
Archery – Life Lessons Developed from a Passion
By P.J. McMullen
When I was a young boy, my father introduced me and my brother to hunting. Because he only ever hunted with rifles and shotguns, I didn’t have much of an opportunity to learn how to shoot a bow and hunt with it. After I graduated from college in my early 20s, I went to an indoor archery range for the first time with a few friends. I flung a few arrows downrange at a paper target about 20 yards away. I can’t remember how well I did, but that didn’t matter much because something about shooting a bow set the hook deep inside me. I bought my first compound bow within two of weeks of that initial experience. My passion for archery grew from there and went beyond just hunting so I joined an indoor archery league when I was 27 and have continued competitive archery now into my mid-50’s.
Throughout the last 28 years of my life many things have impacted the amount of time I was able to spend chasing my archery passion. My beautiful wife Amy and I have proudly raised seven children. They are all out on their own except for our youngest who is 8. I introduced all of them to the sport of archery when they were young because I wanted them to have the same opportunity to share the passion that I have. It did not stick with all of them but the experiences we shared together during those times will provide a lifetime of memories for them as well as for me.
Anyone that does anything competitively already knows that it takes practice to become good enough to be competitive. But sometimes the amount of practice a person invests still doesn’t matter. There is a fine line between enjoyment and dissatisfaction for things we do in life. If it is a chore to do something, we will likely lose the passion to continue and quit. On the other hand, if we can achieve what we expect from the time we put into something, we will likely push ourselves even harder to become better, knowing that with a little more time invested, our skills could improve, and expectations could be exceeded.
For me, working full time and raising a family never allowed for extra time to invest in the needed practice to be competitive at a winning level. Although having some natural skills in archery, not having the time to sharpen those skills and work on the other aspects of the sport, the competitive edge is reduced. For me though, the passion for archery has become much stronger than the desire to always make a podium finish. Although, that does help motivate me to do better. What has worked best for me is not the amount of practice I get but rather the quality of the practice when I make time for it. This approach can be applied to pretty much anything we do in life – career, hobby, mission work, etc. Focusing on doing the best we can and committing to the execution of the task at hand will provide us with more personal satisfaction than just the resulting outcome. Of course, we all want to win and be successful at what we do but it isn’t always the end game that satisfies our inner drive, it is also the journey we take to get there.
