Two years ago, I read Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now in a desperate bid to stem the emotional hemorrhage caused by a bad break up. Gushing despair and heartache, I attempted to resist being washed away by my own sadness with meditation, mindfulness, a gratitude practice. Friends and a dedicated therapist pulled me through the worst of it and eventually, the easy distraction of dating, lifting, and work covered up the self-doubt and insecurity. I’d occasionally dabble in mindfulness but preferred the relative mindlessness that came with lifting. There were brief flings with confidence; even so, when my workouts were a string of messy failures and guys ghosted, I’d tried living in the present again, attempted to detach and observe my feelings pass over me as I ruminated over every sharp jab of disappointment.

It took a pandemic and Michael Jordan to finally, fully get it.

Although Tokyo’s version of lockdown was lax by U.S. standards, the public has generally continued to respect social distancing recommendations. With friends who are decent people, my social life died. Dating became similar to how I currently view doing burpees on a sweaty gym floor: potentially dangerous, probably not worth the possible benefits, and highly likely to be embarrassing given my recent Covid weight gain. Outside the sudden deluge of work assignments, I wasn’t left with much in the way of distractions. The silence was deafening.

In response, I naturally signed up for Netflix and filled my life with Denzel Washington action movies and documentaries. I hoped access to near-endless hours of TV would somehow jumpstart the mindfulness I needed at work and the mindlessness I was craving during my lifting sessions. When The Last Dance aired and became available week by week on Netflix for non-U.S. viewers, I strategically waited until it had concluded to slowly binge it at my leisure.

The docuseries about Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls is, thus far, the only unequivocally good thing to happen this year. The ten-part docuseries follows Michael Jordan through his career with the Chicago Bulls, culminating in the NBA championship win in the 1997-1998 season. The catharsis of re-watching the Bulls dominate the court gave me goosebumps; Michael Jordan’s sheer drive and sometimes anger-fueled performance, inspiration. But most importantly, the Greatest of All Time taught me that to live in the present isn’t limited to the sensations currently felt and smelled and heard, but also require the knowledge that the past can’t affect the now.

“Why would I worry about not making a shot I haven’t made yet,” Michael Jordan reportedly told a friend.

I could come up with several reasons and that’s apparently the point. To succeed at anything takes intention. It’s not mindless muscle memory that marks a successful lift, but the mental capacity to treat each lift as its own, discrete event, unable to be affected by the failed lift right before it, the guy I couldn’t get a text back from, or the unhappy client. Applied to life in general, it’s essentially the ability to stop negging yourself before you even start because in this one moment, none of that other stuff matters.

The realization was embarrassingly eye-opening but simultaneously liberating. It felt like breaking through the first 20 minutes on a bike, when your body finally gives up trying to resist the forced aerobic activity and settles into a rhythm. Since being gifted this nugget of wisdom via a docuseries on professional basketball, things have gotten easier. Ironically, living intentionally in the present takes less energy than worrying about the multitude of things that are beyond my control.