Life is an infinite game of club tennis

Several months ago, I read Metaphors We Live By, a book by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson that argues that metaphors are not something we can live without. They are not matters of speech or flourishes of language. Instead, the authors claim, the concepts that impact how we think, what we experience and what we do every day are metaphorical in nature. It’s a wonderful book that, at the moment, I only dimly understand.

Which means that we use metaphors to understand the world, and to live and act in it. Metaphors, like our knowledge of the world, are incomplete: they partially highlight some aspects while hiding others. They are useful when we want to highlight those aspects, explaining one thing partially in terms of another.

Think, then, of the metaphors by which we relate to the concept of life. Life is a journey. Life is a container. Life is a game of chance. What do we mean when we use these metaphors to understand and act in life?

This book is one that will take me many “passes” to understand. I might read it a few more times in hopes that I get to metabolize what I learn from it. This essay

Life is a game of tennis. This is a metaphor, and it highlights something about the concept of “life” that I think is worth talking about.

Tennis is a sport in which you can be winning, losing and tied at the same time. I learned this about tennis at a young age from a coach I valued a lot, and it struck me as a deep insight even then. It took many years, however, to see this aspect playing out in life more broadly.

These three possible states can combine in different ways to enact different realities and experiences at their confluence. This also suggest a layered system of intertwined time horizons, at least three, where the game, set and match are platforms for short term, mid term and long term horizons for winning, losing and tying.

These tennis states also map to life states of positive, negative and neutral.