Pounding the Rock
I’m writing on my new blog every day for thirty days straight. This is the twenty-fourth one. Pounding the rock. I’ve appropriated this mantra for my career. I hashtag it - #poundingtherock. I remind myself of it as often as I can. But where does it come from and what does it mean?
Let me back up…IT’S NBA SEASON! Thank you God for the Spurs. I’m from San Antonio – so I naturally love the San Antonio Spurs. As it was meant to be. Gregg Popovich, or “Coach Pop,” is the head coach and has been for almost two decades. Coach Pop’s a smart man, a great coach, and a unique leader. He vocally reminds his players that basketball is not the most important thing in their lives. On top of that, he doesn’t settle for normal sports quotes to motivate his players.Pop appropriated this “pounding the rock” mantra first. Here’s a quote from Pop:
It was back in the 90s and I was reading something about immigration in New York way back when, that kind of thing, and [Jacob Riis] was a reformer. He fought for better housing and better conditions, working conditions, that type of thing, for immigrants of all countries.He was relentless at it and that quote that we use is obviously his quote, and I thought it embodied anyone’s effort in any endeavor, really. It doesn’t have to be basketball. It can be a musical instrument or it can be learning mathematics or going to law school or figuring out how to turn the water off in your house because you’re an idiot. If you can’t figure that out you just keep looking, keep trying, keep going.The way he said it was very eloquent, and I thought that it fit. You get tired of all that other junk. ‘Winners never do this’ or ‘Losers always quit.’ ‘There’s no I in team’ — all the typical, trite silly crap you see in locker rooms at all levels. It’s always turned me off, so I thought that this was maybe a little bit more, I don’t know, intelligent. A different way to get to the guys and make them think about it.
A different way to get myself think about my work. In a career that many times doesn’t have visible progress, the following quote is a beautiful way to frame the work. From Jacob Riis:
When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.
Keep looking. Keep trying. Keep going. Pounding the rock.