Have you ever tried to play “tennis,” gentle solver? I did once, in an eighth-grade gym class. Apparently you’re supposed to chase after a small bouncing ball, and when you reach it, you’re supposed, with a tool made of a mesh stretched tightly across an oval frame and attached to a handle, a “racket,” to hit that ball at an angle and with a force that will direct it across a net into a defined space, from which an opposing player may hit it back to you. I tried to do this not just once but several times, but I was never able to make the racket and the ball meet in the same location in space and time, much less direct the ball anywhere at all. And yet I have seen people who seem otherwise to enjoy no exceptional physical abilities engaged in this game. Some even indulge in a variant called “mixed doubles,” in which, while chasing and hitting the ball, you are simultaneously called upon not to collide with someone else who shares your side of the net.
I’d like to conclude here, as a profound insight, that “mixed doubles” is somehow an apt metaphor for life. But in fact I can’t see much resemblance. If life resembles any sort of ball game, it’s the one where you sit on a platform above a tank of water, until someone throws a ball that activates a lever releasing the platform and sending you into the tank. Except, if it were truly like life, the platform would be automatically activated at random intervals, and the tank would be full of sharks.
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