Think Tank Tennis: Part I

Except you don’t “decide” or “plan” anything.  Decisions and planning are functions of the mind, and the body processes all this information more or less immediately as soon as the ball is whacked on the other side of the court and zooms at you across the net.  And it all happens at once.

Past, present, and future collapse into the trajectory of the ball, and you fold right into it all, all at once.  Your wrist adjusts for forehand or backhand while you move towards the ball / while you wind up for a shot / while planting your foot / while swinging the racket / while making contact and directing the ball back across the court and—pow!—the ball flies across the court and you’re setting up for the next return in a lot less time than it takes to read this paragraph.

Imagine if you did have to think tennis instead of play tennis.  Each shot would require spreadsheets and committee meetings.  Maybe on a whiteboard you’d graph the dynamics.  And a Power Point, too, with photos and charts and Venn diagrams.  A list of pros and cons, spin studies, trajectory assessments, and policy on preferred wrist orientation expressed in degree of deviation from the vertical.

Who knows, if tennis were played on a chess board, but featured a rapidly rotating round projectile instead of little statues, even with access to databases for everything, you’d probably need an hour or two of quiet time instead of two seconds of action to execute a return.

Thinking takes more time than you think it does.

This is something we need to think about.

Hmmm.  Thinking is the new kid in the nervous system, and is still very much a work in progress.  Thinking wants to play with the big dogs in the nervous system—the body and the emotions—the working dogs who have been in the game for a million generations.

But Thinking, like a lot of new kids who are not fully developed, tends to be insecure, nervous, bossy, and quite defensive.  The new kid, who’s still learning the game of living, likes to pretend it’s in charge, and barks orders at the big dogs.  The big dogs just yawn and laugh, lick their asses, smack their lips, and run the enterprise while pretty much ignoring the yappy lap dog of the mind.

The yappy lap dog of the mind, aka  “Thinking,”  often attempts to imitate the body, because Thinking is secretly in awe of the body.  Jeez, what new kid wouldn’t be?  The body metabolizes air and wheat and berries and chickens and cabbage and moves through space with ease and plays tennis faster than anyone can think about what just happened.

And while Thinking tries to bully the big dogs, Thinking is jealous of their ease and fit in the world, and wants to be like them.  Thinking sees the body racing around the tennis court, full speed ahead, fully drenched in the enduring fluid moments, and the miracle of it all is beyond the sphere of thought.

So, Thinking does what a lot of new kids do while they try to boss the big dogs around.  In all its foundering, adolescent, wannabe mayhem, Thinking tries plain old imitation.  Thinking tries to imitate the body playing tennis.  So here comes any thought tossed its way, and Thinking treats it like a tennis shot, and rushes to return it without thinking about it, because that’s what the body does, and look at how wonderful the body is!

In fairness, yes, there’s a time and situation for quick, physical thinking, and it can be a lot of fun when the mind plays body.  That’s what a lot of humor is.  And the banter and badinage that lubricates camaraderie.

Most quality forms and functions of thought, however, require time for optimal development.  Thinking takes time.  It does not happen at tennis speed.  It happens at the speed of thought, which is non-quantifiable.  It gestates at its own pace.  New thought ripens over time, and it works best when it’s off the clock.

“It?”

What’s “It?” It is connecting facts and perceptions in new ways for the first time;  wiring up stuff that was never wired up before.  It’s the new, slow-cooked connections that light you up like a cosmic firefly.

And unlike tennis, you score big in thinking not when you hit a winner in bounds but when you soar past the boundaries and upend the rules of the game by expanding those very rules and preconceptions.  Thinking is the game of expanding the court.

Thinking is hard to think about.  It’s a lot easier to think about tennis or what’s in the refrigerator or your future as a benign dictator.  But Thinking is worth some attention, and people have thought about Thinking over the years.

So, now for a few thinks on Thinking  . . .

“I think 99 times and find nothing.  I stop thinking, swim in silence, and the truth comes to me.” – Albert Einstein

“I’ve never seen anybody really find the answer, but they think they have.  So they stop thinking.  But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom.  The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.” – Ken Kesey

“Most of one’s life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself from thinking.” – Aldous Huxley

“Read, every day, something no one else is reading.  Think, every day, something no one else is thinking.  Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do.  It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.” – Christopher Morley

“Few people think more than two or three times a year;  I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.” – George Bernard Shaw

“Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably why so few engage in it.” – Henry Ford

“To think is to differ.” – Clarence Darrow

“And remember, you don’t have to believe everything you think.” – Nancy Graham

And last for today:

“Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge;  it is thinking that makes what we read ours.” – John Locke

John Locke mentioned knowledge around 300 years ago.  We now swim in a sea of knowledge, in our wildly propagating information age.  There’s a lot of it, and more keeps coming.  It’s like playing tennis while the court fills up with tennis balls.  We have to think about this.

Since thinking takes time, we are going to calm down and let this percolate for a bit.  Maybe a game of tennis will help clear the mind.  So stay tuned.  We are approaching Part II, which is thinking your way through the information inundation.  Coming soon to screen near you.  Stay tuned.  We just finished the first set of a slow-motion tennis match.  The game is in process, and the court expands.

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