Try Harder! Stress Less!

I played table tennis for a couple hours this evening, first with Ryan and then with my dad. I played appallingly poorly. True, the lighting in our basement is less than ideal, and if we showed our table to anyone with real ping pong skills and ambitions, he would probably stare at it icily or guffaw in our faces and our relationship would have to be discontinued. But if the playing field was not even, at least its unevenness was shared by both players. I could not complain that it was not fair. No, my big excuse for Ryan beating me something like eight times out of ten was tension: I wanted to win so badly that I would find myself straining every muscle in an attempt to be more ready for every shot. Then, recognizing my stress level and sagaciously remembering that I perform better stress-free, I would try to be calm and relaxed. Unfortunately, this usually resulted in my growing increasingly floppy and unfocused. I would try so hard to relax that I would not try to play. It was distressing.

It can be so hard to “try to relax.” That’s the trouble, really. Stressing out about not being relaxed is counterproductive, not to mention illogical. "Relax and try harder" is a different statement altogether, however, and paradoxical though it may sound, I would go so far as to say that, in many situations, relaxation and exertion must both be pursued for any measure of success to be attained.

When I played my dad later, it was a lot better. Something about playing someone who is not your little brother and who used to be a high school champion (though when he was a senior he came in second to a sophomore and still kicks himself about it) makes it matter slightly less that you win. And when the stakes are lowered, relaxing is easier. I lost every game to my dad, and by bigger margins than when I played Ryan, but I played much better and had more fun. And that’s really what the game is all about.

(Well, primarily about.)

Ping pong is not the only area where the principle of simultaneous relaxation and exertion is effective – it is merely the example that is most current in my mind. The other example that comes quickest to my mind is playing the piano. You simply can NOT play with great speed if you are not relaxed. And you cannot play with great speed unless you focus and apply yourself, too.

It’s also true for running. It’s also true for debating. It’s also true for singing, for web design, for swimming… Oh, good grief! It’s a universal principle of life! The Great Aaron has revealed it. Use it often. Use it well.

Fiddler Crab

Dickens, Modernized

It was the best of times,     it was the worst of times,    it was the age of wisdom,   it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way …

Cape Cod Sunset

The Rights of Man As Perceived By a Child

I think I may have been a singular child.  Certainly, I know of few boys who have so early developed and cultivated into maturity a sense of the rights of the father in the family setting.  I was, as I say, quite young when I first recognized the man of the family’s greatest and most sacred privilege: the claim to the driver’s seat.

The father’s right to drive was something I long considered a certain unalienable right with which he had been endowed by his Creator.  After all, whenever we went anywhere as a family, Daddy always drove.  And, I suppose I reasoned, if something were always done a certain way in our family, mustn’t it be the supreme law of the universe?  Indeed, I could think of few worse infractions against the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God than for the mother to drive the family anywhere.  Of course, when the father was not around, the mother must inevitably sometimes assume the role of chaufferess.  This was no sin.  But for the woman to drive when the man was in the same vehicle was a dreadful usurpation of paternal authority, and I never beheld such an occurrence without grave fears for the souls of the reprobates in question.

I remember one particular time, long ago, when just such a scenario was played out before my eyes.  We were leaving church, I believe, and I spotted some naughty woman driving her husband away – and in such proximity to the very house of God!

“Mama!  Why is … (I can’t remember who the culprits were exactly, so I’ll make this generic) … why is Mrs. Smith driving instead of Mr. Smith?”

“Well, Aaron, maybe Mr. Smith is tired or doesn’t want to drive.”

Doesn’t want to drive?!?  This was food for thought, indeed.  What right had he not to want to drive?  I was perplexed and baffled.  A little crack opened up in the dike of my convictions.

“Well, if he’s tired, I suppose it’s all right…”

I stuck my finger into the crack.  But it kept growing, growing, growing, through the years, and soon all my precocious ideas began to crumble and my youthful, imaginative dogmata were reduced to the ruins of real life.  Just look at me now!  Half a dozen women could drive their husbands by me and I would scarcely blink an eye.