When I read that Lorena Ochoa, one of the best contemporary women professional golfers who would have been a shoe-in for the LPGA Hall of Fame if she’d only played two more years on the tour, announced her retirement from golf to pursue personal/family goals (including having children with her husband of a few years) and devoting more time to charitable work, I couldn’t help but think of the contrast with Tiger Wood’s brief “retirement” after being caught by his wife and the media living a lie.

Based on what I’ve read and witnessed from a distance it’s clear to me that the two examples of living with extreme talent and fortune, albeit in fundamentally different performance spheres, exhibit starkly different levels of mindfulness (that ability to live in the moment with sensitivity and openness to one’s surroundings while maintaining the focus on the task at hand) and character (that sense of one’s humanity that respects in a mindful way one’s spiritual and physical relationship to one’s environment and to the reciprocal desires and obligations for living life fully engaged). Continue reading →