Friday Feelings: Silent Night and The Rising

Hi Everyone, 

Thursday (thoughts) got away from me this week, so here is a bit of Friday Feelings. It has been a week of feelings, for most of us. I’m not going to get political here, but there has been much tragedy in the past ten days. And I know I had such strong feelings, not of right or wrong, though there is that too, but just overwhelming feelings, the darkness of those curfew hours, and the only way to deal with those feelings was a poem. 

Silent Night

Un holy night

Windows smashed

Nothing ‘s right

Curfew descending

Fear transcending

Get us through

This silent night

Not real uplifting, but true. Just the fear, and the wonder of what is happening to our country. How did it get to this point? Nights with no cars, no sounds, boarded windows, complete silence. In so many ways. But the last couple days have brought more hope. 

So, with Friday Feelings, we start dark, but move towards the light. One of my all-time favorites, is: 

“Don’t forget in the darkness what you knew in the light.” – Robert Munger

And that intermingles with:

Two men looked

Through prison bars

One saw mud

One saw stars. 

-- John Powell, SJ

Sometimes it is hard to see those stars, in our nights of darkness, maybe there are lots of clouds in our life, in the world, but it is important to look, or at least to consider that they could, at least in theory, exist.

Of course, it can be this way in tennis as well. All can seem lost in a match, and then, something happens, and it all just turns around. We don’t really know what is good, or bad, or what leads to a positive or negative result. Maybe it was that bad line call that inspired you to play the best of your life (“I’m not losing to this bum”). Who knows? Something just switched. 

Or in the big picture, we don’t even know what is a negative or positive result. Some pretty bad losses have led to some pretty amazing improvements I have made personally. I remember embarrassingly totally whiffing an overhead in a tournament doubles match. My partner even said, “You need professional help (I took it as he was talking about my overhead).” 

I took some lessons, and ended up, in the long run, with a really good overhead. Some friends, years later, have said, “Your overhead is your best shot.” 

I try not to chuckle at that one. And that overhead work led to more lessons, and the overhauling of my forehand, which improved dramatically as well. And so started a thirty year student / mentor relationship with my teacher that made me a much better player, and a much better teaching pro. In life, there are changes that I wouldn’t have made if it wasn’t for the hard times that went before. The crushing defeats, the hideous misses. 

There needs to be a certain level of desperation and defeat, to take the risk to make major changes. I mean, if you backhand sucks, and people keep picking on it, over and over again, at some point you might make a commitment to making it better. Make a change. 

I remember the story of Ivan Lendl, who as a young man, was #3 in the world, behind McEnroe and Connors, and he was new on the scene. He had a huge serve, and an awesome forehand, and a really poor backhand. Players would attack his weaker side over and over. Finally, he was asked about it, and Lendl had the most amazing answer. I mean, he was only 22 years old, if that, at the time. When asked if it bothered him that he was always being attacked on the backhand side, he said, “No, not at all. With all this practice, I will end up with a good backhand.” 

And so it came to pass, that years later when he was #1 in the world, it could be said that Lendl’s backhand was better than his forehand. (“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” – Nietzsche). That his backhand separated him from the rest, for there were lots of good forehands in his day, but no one had his backhand. 

This story reminds me of one of the most amazing shots that I ever saw in tennis. One that has stuck with me all these years.  Not so much the stroke, which was brilliant, but the context and what must have gone into it for this moment in tennis history to have even happen. 

Lendl was playing Pat Cash, the amazing Aussie net charger, in the semifinal of the US Open, must have been in the mid to late 80s, and it was late in the fifth set of an epic match. Lendl almost always sliced his backhand, and by this point it was a pretty damn good shot. Few, if any, could attack it successfully. Cash came into the net, and on deuce point, at 5-5 or so in the 5^th, Cash attacks Lendl’s backhand and closes in to cut off the slice return, and Lendl throws up a backhand topspin lob – it froze Cash – and landed in the corner for a clean winner. That lob sets up basically match point on the next point, which Lendl wins (Cash was still stunned). Lendl holds serve, goes on to final, and to win the title. 

Now what was really amazing about this shot, is Lendl almost always would hit slice backhands, sometimes topspin backhands to attack down the line, and I never, ever (I watched this guy for 10 years),  saw him hit a topspin lob off that side and yet, he was so good that in the heat of a very intense and close match, he had the confidence to play the perfect shot, the shot he was called to play, even though he hadn’t hit it once in the match up to then. That is amazing.

Now let’s not kid ourselves. That is not the first time Lendl ever hit that shot. This is why we practice, this is why we train, this is why we learn, and challenge ourselves, not in front of the huge New York crowds, or in the pressure situations, but by ourselves, on the practice court with partners, coaches or a ball machine, so that when the moment comes, and inspiration calls, we can do the things that we never thought we could do. And others doubted. 

The moment can break you, or it can make you better. Make you do things you didn’t even know that you could. 

So perhaps that is true with our country, and these tough times. That they will lead to something much better. Something that we wouldn’t even have thought would be “much better” in an earlier time. Something not even thought of, out of the boundaries of our collective imagination. 

There is an idea that light and darkness work together. We find this in many of the great philosophical traditions. The Yin and the Yang. That there is always light and darkness. That darkness can also improve the situation, and that we need more than just the light. 

In the movie, Never Cry Wolf, the predator wolves, while first blamed and portrayed as evil hunters by humans, to be destroyed, are finally seen by the scientists as what keeps the herd of prey (reindeer) strong. The wolves, by hunting the reindeer, and yes, killing and eating some of the weaker ones --the ones they can catch -- makes the herd stronger. The quicker, stronger, faster reindeer’s ability to survive and breed leads to the reproduction of a stronger heard. And the heard works together to protect its weaker (younger and older) members as well, which also strengthens the entire group.  

The wolves seem like darkness, but their ongoing influence contribute to the light. Without the wolves, there would be too many reindeer, and they would over graze, thus damaging their fragile artic ecosystem and there wouldn’t be enough food for all of them to eat. All would starve, or get weak and be subject to disease, including the few remaining wolves. 

In the great Russian novel, The Master and Margarita, the devil visits 1930s Stalinist Russian (many believe the darkest period in Russian history) to see “if men have changed” over the centuries. Through antics and games, temptation and interventions, he works in conjunction with the light to find two people, the Master and Margarita, to bring them justice and peace. And truth is revealed through the Master’s novel (a story within a story) about the nature of things, of men, and their relation to the Divine. “Cowardice is the greatest sin.”  

So, the darkness tests us to the bottom of our soul, and sometimes at the bottom of that soul, we find out what it is that makes us tick. And what can bring us forward. Perhaps without the stress of an intense “night of the darkness”, a “silent night,” without that pressure, we can’t access or find what it is that we need to find. Or need to remember. (“All men are created equal…”)

“Don’t forget in the darkness what you knew in the light.”

It is said that a forest fire can destroy a forest, but the very heat of that fire is what activates the seeds in the pinecones to start the building of a new forest in place of the old one, that was perhaps starting to decay and die out. The fire destroys, but also rebuilds. 

The night before an important match, or speech, or performance, perhaps we are restless, can’t sleep, may even be sick to our stomachs, and question everything we know, fear every fear, imagine we can’t even play, function, that we will lose in the most humbling, and embarrassing way, and all we have worked for will be for naught. 

And maybe it is though that dark night of the soul, that we rediscover, in those depths, what it is that makes us who we are, and empowers us to new heights, we never could have reached without accessing our true selves, that was buried deep beneath everyday things, and fears and concerns. And it took a great upheaval to unbury who we really are. 

Maybe this is why we play tennis, or dare to try things that challenge us, take up a new hobby, set a new goal, because it is through these challenges that we are reborn, that we come alive, that we realize our potential, that we become the persons that we want to be. Find our higher selves. 

***

And of course, we will fall back into the mundane, the day to day, and bad experiences will arise again, and we will have to do it all again. We may compare ourselves in day to day life (our average), or in our depths, to our higher selves, and that may make us feel even worse, that we can’t seem to ever live up to our best. But that isn’t fair, or even true, we just aren’t going to be our best all the time. That is the human experience. 

When we look at an EKG, there is a beat, a heartbeat, on and off. A pulse. And when we breath, we breath in and we breath out. There is a rising and a falling. This is life. This is the way of life. 

Death is a flatline. On the EKG, put that line high, or low, or right in the middle of the screen, and it is still death. Life is up and down, rising and falling. Death teaches life, the value of life, value of falling, and rising. 

Come on up for the rising

Come on up, lay your hands in mine

Come on up for the rising

Come on up for the rising tonight

-- Bruce Springsteen, The Rising

Life has been compared to the waves on the sea. Some peaks and some valleys, but we are always connected to the stable, unmovable depths of the ocean. Life may seem crazy on the surface, a terrible storm or a great ride on the best wave of your life (“hang ten” or “tubular, man”), but we are all part of the greater ocean. Everything is connected. And it will all be OK. 

Blessings, in the darkness and in the light, 

-- Keith