The war ends when we surrender our self will and begin the work of recovery, but even in recovery, we can find ourselves resorting to old behaviors without realizing it. We can give ourselves some grace with this process if we keep in mind that the war wasn’t erased from our experience; rather, it’s something we’re still actively getting over.

Watching film for him wasn’t just looking back on good or bad times; it was a serious analysis of his timing and movements, a return to a past performance with a clearer and more removed perspective than he had in the moment of play so that he might learn from it.