Breathe, Bounce, Believe

The four doors of my blue jeep were cranked open as my fiancée sat in the heat of the blistering sun, with her fiery scowl. Just twelve hours before, she was also hot but staring at the grass lawn of the Westside Tennis Club. A waitress handed us a menu with ten different roses in ascending order from prices highest to lowest, because that's how the clientele shopped. I ordered an Arnold Palmer with no alcohol and thought, "Man, does it get any better than this?" 

And then the world answered me with a viscous loss, 1-5 to a big server in a dingy indoor court in a town nobody's ever heard of in upstate New York. A round robin tournament, with sets played to 5 games, a format that resembles TikTok tennis. I felt suffocated from the start, like a novelist forced to only write haikus. 

I need time on the court. Not so much to figure out my opponent, but time to figure out myself. What version of myself is there that day, and how do I motivate them? Is it the creative Josh, the free-spirited Josh, or the aloof Josh who lacks a reason and motivation to succeed, instead playing an endless game of ping pong with his mind, trying to find the meaning of life?

A very tough question to try and ponder while some guy is firing a little yellow ball at you. 

There was a time my father didn't talk to me for three days because I lost to an eight-year-old girl at basketball, and the truth is I only lost to her because I knew I could win. In tennis, this is highlighted more because playing someone you know you should beat is more complex than playing an ATP pro if your ego has any say in the manner. The mind will start to say things like "you know if you lose to this fool you suck."

But the mind will say a bunch of dumb things throughout your life, and the best defense I have come up with so far is to breathe, bounce, and believe.

Breathe in and out, follow the rhythm of your natural breath to silence the mind. Connect with the moment, connect with God, connect with yourself. Bounce up and down, never stagnant, always moving, and anticipate the next ball through movement. Believe that you will win, no matter what.

The thing about trying to figure out your life or who you are is that they are both impossible tasks. Like overplanning, it is a cop out. The pretenders tell you what they will do, but the doers do, sometimes in silence and sometimes quickly.

They marry the person they love, move to a sunny state, and continue to hit a little green ball, even after losing.