With age, I have learned to appreciate adages and proverbs that I found silly as a child. Once regarded as merely the impractical phrases my parents, teachers or other authority figures used to gently and verbally chastise me, these same proverbs and adages now follow and comfort me. And like an old friend with whom I have shared a common experience I know the message each brings has meaning in my life.

One Spanish proverb comes to mind when summing up my free time:

“The busy man is troubled with but one devil; the idle man by a thousand”

I have only one devil and my devil has a name…Time. And though I have made every effort to control him with the use of calendars, watches, alarms and automatic reminders, somehow, he always seems one tick ahead of me as I toil about my mundane activities looking for a respite from life. I don’t think Time ever threatened me while growing up…in fact, I think I had too much time and often complained of sheer boredom, from elementary school right up until I graduated from college. In those idle times, the “thousand little devils” would manifest themselves through insecurities or self-doubts pertaining to my place and purpose in this complex world.

These little devils paralyzed me and created cracks in the brightly multi-colored façade of the idealized life I had envisioned for myself. Years passed and the network of cracks destroyed the idealized enclosure I had used to protect and shelter my childhood. Then, after a low point I chose to rebuild the façade in a manner better suited to highlight my strengths and protect my weaknesses while still coveting those idealistic notions that brought me strength and comfort as a little one. In so doing, the thousand little devils transformed themselves into one nemesis, one devil…Time. I battle Time for my kids, for my girlfriend, for my online business, for my parents, for my siblings and for projects I began full of promise but never devoted enough effort to see through to completion.

And so the battle continues and every now and then, I take a cheap shot…I kick that devil between the legs, poke him in the eye or give him a wedgie in the form of a day off of work, a diversion in the park, a match of tennis, a game of freeze tag with my twins, or a walk through the Farmer’s market with my girlfriend. My vain attempt to get an upper hand, to lose myself for a moment, to catch my breath as if to say…”Dude, can you give me just a little bit of space now?”.

When asked why I play tennis now, after nearly thirteen years of not touching a racket, I say flippantly, that I needed a reason to quit smoking.  In truth, tennis has become a microcosm of my life, an effort to improve myself, my mental toughness, my technical acumen, my physical prowess, and my stress release, all in the controlled environment of a 78 foot by 27 foot court, governed by simple rules dating back to 1873.

As a teenager, when I first took up the sport, I played because I enjoyed the individualistic aspect of the game.  At that time my game mostly relied on the vigor and strength of my youth and an average all around technical game.  I won or lost as a result of my own efforts and I could not blame others for my poor performance.   If my game sucked, then only I alone could improve it. Accountability, what a concept, it has dominated my character throughout my life…more on this later.

With age, I have grown to appreciate the more subtle aspects of the game and have taken a piece-meal approach to improving my technique: the driving forehand, the first serve, the second serve, the volley, the driving backhand, the slice forehand, the slice backhand, the lob, and my net game.  I can draw parallels between each of these aspects of the game and events in my life.  I believe each improvement in my game brings insight into how I might improve the other more pressing activities in my life.

So, I am not a team player…I am an artist who prefers to control his own destiny, paint his own picture, play his own game, whether I’m participating in a sport or in the broader stage of life. And so, I have chosen tennis as my “life sport” and will seek to improve my game and apply those lessons to my life with every loss I suffer.