Tennis......Life

I like tennis......a lot. I enjoy competing and improving, but I also know whether winning or losing, it is never the most important thing in the world. I have been learning more about it especially in the last few weeks.

A few weeks ago, my doubles partner and I played a great match and won 6-0, 6-0. This is the best possible score in tennis in terms of game count. Shortly after my match, I left my teammates a bit early to get ready for a dinner party later that evening. As I was putting my bag in my car, I noticed the car next to me had a broken window. It turned out the car owner was one of my opponents. I felt bad as she already was not having a great day on the court, but she handled the situation well (and thankfully she didn't lose any valuables). In the end, I stayed with her and skipped my friends' party.

My partner and I had played a great match just a couple of hours ago, but when I left the tennis courts, what I thought about was how unimportant the result was. It just didn't matter.

Not long ago, I played another doubles match with another partner. We had a slow start but played very well in the second set to win it 6-0. For the third-set tiebreak, it went neck-to-neck the entire time, but we lost 9-11. It was so close, so close that if we had won those couple of points, we would have won not only the match, but also the line against the top team in our league.

But after a few minutes of disappointments, I went home, showered and started cooking. The meal was not for us. It was for our neighbors who had just lost their mother(-in-law). It was a sad time for the entire family. Compared to this, I don't see how I could even mention the loss, no matter how tough it might seem at the moment.

My most recent match was against the same top team (we had to reschedule our first match, thus the back-to-back matches). I played with yet another doubles partner. We lost a tight first set, but came back in the second set, and played a great third-set tiebreak to win. We won all five lines, so we returned from second place to the top ranking. However, as I was playing, our neighbors were at their mother(-in-law)'s funeral, saying goodbye to their loved one.

Perspective.