Play to win? Or lose to play?

Should a badge of honor be the only motivational impetus for performance?

But this is nowhere related to me, someone who can only pick the shot and land the ball ‘safely’ in the opposite court. Only that if my shot could be faster, the opponent would fail to beat the thrust and end up losing a point. Perhaps, this is what we call a ‘SMASH’, right?

From this perspective, I am a non-smasher, someone who you can also call an average player, someone who could do better justice with badminton. Still, it was not a reason enough to stop me from taking my pizza share at the lovely tennis matches held during the last weekend.

Now being quite honest here, I would accept that it was a distressing feeling in the morning when I left from home, not because of my average competence at table tennis, but also because of the sudden allergy I got all over my face. Hence for the last few days, I had been feeling pressed down by this persistent negative feeling about my new grotesque appearance.

Despite and above everything, I was ready to ‘spoil’ my Saturday – to let myself get more embarrassed by the glance of the people around, to lose every match of the game and to end up with a strong headache which would  last for another 2 -3 days.

[bctt tweet=”The real passion towards life is to confront unfavorable situations, know your weakness, accept your failures and see if you can manage to still stay strong.” username=”wordsallmine”]

8 females (including me), 15 males, a little fear and slight hesitation were enough to literally shake me up!

The girl in front of me, a veteran player of tennis was prepared well enough for the match. That’s what atleast her firm posture and grim expressions dictated to me. In no time, she threw me a smart shot! I tried to return it fair with my racket keeping the lucky red side in the front. But the spinning ball, dancing in the air deceived it like a consummate vamp. And my poor racket flipped through air, leaving both me and the audience disappointed! Now that was an important moment when the miss and several other consequent misses pushed my spirits too hard to break. But forcing a true smile instead had become another game for me, invisible though.

[bctt tweet=”Whether you are prepared or not, opportunities would endlessly keep hitting your way like the shots of Tennis, from all different angles, fast and slow. But the real fun lies in the fact that you revel in both the hit and the miss. Because both have their own joy” username=”wordsallmine”]

Hence I took the joy…

While the matches were going on, I was observing myself from a distance to find how I am enjoying this day.  And what I noticed was a girl playing in full swing with the smile making her more beautiful, more cheerful than each passing moment. And soon as the beats of the sweet inaudible music reached a crescendo, I found the people around cheerfully laughing at the verbose humor she was creating. She was still losing the game but it had become a very insignificant phenomenon, if you compare it to winning the hearts of the people!

[bctt tweet=”Your achievements might definitely make you feel proud, but the contentment cannot be attained unless you learn to smile at your failures.” username=”wordsallmine”]

Finally, the match got over, but the opponent girl came up with an unexpected smile and said, ‘you played so well. Ofcourse I did, because I didn’t consider myself a weak player until the end. After losing some more single matches… oh yes, I did, my doubles partner came running to me, gave me a five and exclaimed, ‘well played my partner…’ I guess no one did similar thing with their partners even if they won the match.  Later as I transformed the doubles matches into something like a funny gag, not only the opponent team laughed, but also the umpire and everyone around.  This could sound a little crazy. But we were learning to enjoy defeat. We were learning to be happy in every odd situation. We were learning to appreciate each other even if we didn’t perform well. We were learning to live indeed…

I felt myself greater than ‘victory and defeat’ which had seemingly shrunk to zero. I learnt that winning is important but it is more important to laugh at defeats. And about my face?  The allergy became inferior to the feeling when my dear partner made me sit in her lap while the chairs were scarce.

I went home(this time without headache), hugged my mom and danced to amazing songs like mad for over an hour until I got completely drenched in sweat. It was extremely mind-boggling.

Here is the song which I played over 5 times in a row and invite you too to dance to its crazy beats and enjoy your day, no matter sad or glad…