happiness, god, and tennis
I’m sure when I first became aware of the voice in my head, but I remember a conversation I had with myself in fifth grade. I was sitting on Viewmont Elementary’s carpet gym floor, watching the talent show, feeling distinctly untalented.
me: I wish I had a talent
also me: Why?
me: If I were talented, people would like me.
also me: Why do you want people to like you?
me: If people liked me, then I would be happy.
also me: Why does that matter? Can you just be happy?
me: Lightbulb insight!
I realized happiness didn’t depend on having a talent, being liked by others, or any other external factors. I could choose to be happy – it’s found within. The path is the goal. I’d solved the meaning of life.
My family went to church every Sunday, and I went through confirmation, but religion didn’t play a central role in my childhood. My parents never made a big show of faith. I learned religion was a private matter. We only said a blessing before meals with the extended family, not amongst ourselves. So, needless to say, religion wasn’t front and center. I remember sitting on the driveway with my mom grilling on the logistics of getting into heaven, as the following dialogue demonstrates.
Me: So only Christians go to heaven?
Mom: That’s not really how it works.
Me: But that’s what the bible says. You have to believe Jesus is your savior to go to heaven.
Mom: Well, not everyone is taught to believe the same things. God loves everyone, and they may believe in a different version of things, and that’s okay too. They can still go to heaven.
Me: My mom is wrong. The Bible is very clear. It sucks for all those non-Christians out there. Guess they’re going to suffer eternal damnation.
Along with my preoccupation with happiness, I also became obsessed with tennis in the fifth grade. I practiced four-plus hours a day and competed in tournaments every other weekend. The top tennis player in North Carolina always prayed before matches and was a FORCE to be reckoned with. Sure, he was a man playing with boys (early puberty). But if he was praying before matches, God must be on his side. “That’s the secret sauce,” I thought. Thus began the God-tennis entanglement.
tennis and the afterlife
Having solved the meaning of life at the ripe age of eleven, it was time for more important things: tennis and the afterlife. I began thinking about death and how that relates to my happiness hypothesis. Happiness on earth is great, but what about eternal happiness? That’s what heaven promises. After you die, you either go to heaven or hell. Any sane person wants to go to heaven – that’s eternal happiness. I’d likely live for eighty to ninety years – nothing compared to eternity. So a new inner mission emerged: the quest for heaven. It wouldn’t be long before I was reading the Bible cover to cover.
I began praying a lot. My relationship with God was distinctly transactional. I’d ask him for help winning tennis matches, and in return, I’d read the Bible. “If you help me win this match,” I prayed/thought, “then I’ll read ten chapters of the bible tonight.” If that weren’t enough for God, I’d start up the ante. I went from being ranked 102 in North Carolina when I was ten to being ranked number one in the South, a seven-state region, when I was fourteen. Clearly, this demonstrated that God wanted me to be a professional tennis player on earth and enjoy eternal happiness in heaven. Life was grand. My formula for success was quite simple: practice hard and read the bible. That was the dominant paradigm in my life from when I was eleven until I was fifteen or sixteen. Despite my on-court antics (a la John McEnroe), I was saintly. Ha!
falling from grace
This bizarre tennis-God relationship fell apart when I was fifteen or sixteen. Then a few things happened that altered my trajectory. First, I was suspended from tournament play (see above: on-court antics), then my first tournament back, I suffered an ankle injury that sidelined me for a few months. Finally, I reasoned, the Big Guy was no longer on my side. Couple this with my analytical mind hard at work on the bible (mind you, this was probably the only reading I did for a few years), and this relationship was about to blow up.
There’s a lot of wisdom in the great religious texts, the Bible, Koran, Dhammapada, Bhagavad Gita, etc. But they don’t necessarily follow formal logic. My adolescent brain couldn’t grasp the metaphor – it saw discrepancies. My tennis career (self) imploding, coupled with my increasing frustration with the inconsistencies in the Bible, and I was in for my first significant identity pivot. If dogmatically reading the bible, praying, and playing tennis wasn’t my path to salvation, then maybe I was going about it wrong. If this bible stuff wasn’t making sense anymore, what if the whole heaven thing was a racket? I knew happiness mattered, but maybe I didn’t need to worry about heaven. Perhaps wordly pleasure was the path…
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