Acceptance is its own verve

“Is this tennis? Grinding for a year and a half, and then you lose to a guy who has a knee brace on?”
–Sam Morrison, in this video

I’ve been fascinated with this social account called “Baseline Conversations.” It chronicles Sam Morrison’s newfound tennis passion, which he discovered after playing D1 college football. I love seeing people try new things, and it’s interesting to me that even a premiere athlete has to start from scratch with a sport like tennis. 

In the video the quote is from, Morrison candidly shares his feelings after losing a match to “a guy with a knee brace on.” His opponent was what many in tennis call a “pusher.” Someone who isn’t necessarily technically skilled at hitting great shots, but someone who consistently gets the ball over the net and forces their opponent to make mistakes. 

In an essay, David Foster Wallace chronicled his own experiences playing tennis in school. “I couldn’t begin to tell you how many tournament matches I won between the ages of twelve and fifteen against bigger, faster, more coordinated and better-coached opponents simply by hitting balls unimaginatively back down the middle of the court…letting the other kid play with more verve and panache, waiting for enough of his ambitious balls aimed near the lines to curve or slide via wind outside the green court and white stripe into the raw red territory that won me yet another ugly point.”

My mind recently made the connection between the tennis “pusher” strategy, and creative consistency. “Pushing” wins tennis matches. Creative consistency earns opportunity, even without genius or connections. Sure, there may be some who can hit it faster than you, or sing better than you, or return shots more accurately, or who have a connection to genius-level ideas. But if we are to still create, this is something we must accept, and learn to play with.

You may not be the best, and the conditions may not be perfect. But that doesn’t mean you can’t create something meaningful today. 

“I was an unpopular player, with good reason,” Wallace wrote. “But to say that I did not use verve or imagination was untrue. Acceptance is its own verve, and it takes imagination for a player to like wind, I and I liked wind.”