Sweet Spot

Pleasure Endures

Someone has said that a sure sign of wisdom is being alert to enduring happiness.

Of course I know that life never stops presenting roadblocks that can make happiness elusive. Even seemingly impossible.

But must misfortune dictate unhappiness? Might it be possible to be happy in the midst of hardship?

The other day, on the adjoining tennis court, was a man who resembled someone I had known, but he was smaller, more bent over, diminished, than the man I remembered.

So seemingly damaged, that I was taken aback to see him on the tennis court. He could hardly move toward a ball that was beyond his reach, and when he did swing, his arm seemed barely able to swing the racket.

But then I saw him make perfect contact, sending the ball deep into the opposing court. And his face lit up, clearly delighted.

I asked a friend if that was in fact the man I suspected. He confirmed that it was.

“Oh my God, what happened to him?”

“He has aggressive, metastatic cancer and is in the midst of strenuous radiation and chemotherapy.”

“How brave of him to be out on the court,” I said.

“I said the same thing to him,” my friend said. “He told me that it’s incredibly hard, painful. But he told me, ‘I live for that one time the racket hits the sweet spot on the racket. It gives me a sense of pleasure and satisfaction that eclipses all the misery for that moment. I would come out here in my hands and knees, just for that one hit on the sweet spot.’”

I have played tennis since I was 4 years old. I don’t play competitively any more. When my back went sour a year and a half ago I thought my tennis days were over. I can’t move the way I once did, and my strength is significantly reduced.

But in an hour on the court, I feel the ball meet that sweet spot on the racket, maybe five times. It perks me up for the rest of the afternoon.

Sometimes I play like a donkey

a shadow of my former self.

That man I saw struggling on the next court has become my unwitting mentor. Reminding me that happiness is imbedded in the smallest, seemingly insignificant motions, just beneath the surface of unhappiness.

Being alert to the sweet spots scattered around a day, is a choice for happiness.