Miyazaki, Tennis, and Resiliency
Staying strong in the face of failure
So I’ve only been running this little operation for a couple of weeks and I’ve already failed. My goal was to output at least one (1) new piece of writing every week, and last week I couldn’t get the job done.1
But that’s ok - to choose to do something (especially if you want to do it well) is to choose to fail.
I’ve actually been thinking about failure a lot lately. It is very easy to be weighed down by failure, and these past couple of weeks I think we’ve all been feeling pretty heavy. Some sort of malaise of hopelessness has overtaken the mood of everyone I know. Which makes sense - life (in general) has been kind of a bummer.
But the reason why special interests are so important to me (and fellow neurodivergent folks) is that they offer a lens through which to view the world, a different perspective, which can be particularly helpful during hard times.
In this moment, these are the interests that are giving me life and meaning.
Tennis
I’ve never played tennis, but I find the sport utterly fascinating. Few things make me more giddy than to wake up at 5:30 in the morning to watch a match between players with names that I cannot pronounce.
There is a lot I love about tennis, but I want to talk about something I call “tennis psychology”.
I shan’t bore you with the specific rules and regulations of the sport, but as you may know, tennis is primarily 1v12 . As a result, there is a sort of chess-like dynamic where a player’s psychology has a very meaningful impact on their ability to win matches. As a tennis player, you could be the most gifted athlete in the world, but your success comes down to two foundational elements - belief and resiliency.
If you want to win, you must believe you can win. And if you believe you can win, then you can build up resiliency to periods of (inevitable) failure.
Novak Djokovic (the inarguable GOAT of men’s tennis with 24 Grand Slams) is the epitome of both these principals. He tends to start matches out slowly, often falling behind even against less skilled opponents. But through sheer belief and force of will, he’s gone on to stage some of the greatest comebacks the sport has ever seen.
But compare Novak’s play to that of relative newcomer (and future GOAT, already has 5 Grand Slams at age 23) Iga Swiatek. Where Novak is the comeback king, Iga is known for totally crushing her opponents, and is considered the “Bagel Queen” 3. She comes out fast and strong, and by doing so, imposes her will on the match. She doesn’t believe she will win, she knows she will win (quite a contrast from her introverted off court persona). Her style of play makes her opponents think that victory against her is impossible, so they often just give up halfway through the match.
But even Iga Swiatek can fail. Her comeback in the 2023 French Open final was particularly inspiring. After not losing a single set throughout the entire tournament, she lost the first set (in women’s tennis, it’s best 2/3 sets, so losing the first set can be pretty rough). Many players would have crumbled under the unexpected pressure, but she was able to rally and win in impressive fashion against a skilled opponent.
In tennis, failure is inevitable, but it’s all about how one responds to failure that determines who will win the match.
I’ve been able to apply this tennis psychology to my artistic pursuits. I’ve failed to maintain one of my goals with this newsletter. But I still have my belief and resiliency.
Despite my failure, I believe I can create something meaningful and good. And if I can maintain a mentality of resiliency through periods of failure, then I can continue to build up success. And if I can continue to build a series of successes, then I will strengthen my belief and resiliency, even when I inevitably fail in the future.
But you can take this sort of system and apply it to pretty much anything, even our current life situation.
I truly believe that we can make the world a better place - a place where everyone can feel safe, fulfilled, and nourished (in every sense of the word). Inevitably, we will face periods where such a future seems impossible, and we are currently in such a position in time and space. But, if we can maintain belief and stay resilient, then I have no doubt that we can create a better world for ourselves and for future humans.
Miyazaki
I love (okay, I’m obsessed with) Hayao Miyazaki’s work, and the past couple of weeks I have been watching and re-watching his movies. He is truly one of the great masters of storytelling and I hope that he will never die.
My recent favorites are Kiki’s Delivery Service (watched this one three times in the past month), Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (saw it for the first time, very good), and just last night I watched Whisper of the Heart (also for the first time).
I’ll take a moment to speak on Whisper of the Heart which, unlike the other two films, was not directed by Miyazaki, but he did write it (the director was Yoshifumi Kondō).
The basic gist of the story is that a 14 year old girl notices that all her library books have been previously checked out by the same boy. She then falls in love with that boy, and during their courting period she has an artistic existential crisis.
Believe me when I say this is an oversimplification of the story. If you haven’t seen Whisper of the Heart I won’t give too much away, but there is one part I wanted to speak on: the artistic existential crisis.
If you are an artist (and I mean that very broadly, as it’s a word I also apply to myself) then you have surely felt at one point in time that you are the worst artist in the world.
Miyazaki, through Whisper of the Heart, speaks directly to this insecurity.
At one point in the film our protagonist, Shizuku, completes her first big project, something she has truly poured her heart and soul into and its… ok. It’s not terrible, it just needs some work.
Of course, she is devastated, and believes that she will never be able to become a great artist deserving of love, care, or affection of any kind (and I get it girl). But, Shizuku is able to overcome, and by doing so is a better artist (and person) for the experience.
To choose to be an artist is to choose a life of failure and sadness. But the artist’s life, which requires you to smash your soul into pieces and then put it back together over and over again, can be incredibly rewarding if you can fight through those times of feeling not-good-enough.
Whisper of the Heart taught me (like many Miyazaki films have), that hard work and resilience in the face of adversity is a key skill to becoming an artist.
If you consider yourself an artist of any kind, I really really encourage you to watch this lovely and incredible film.
I’ll leave you with this quote from Whisper of the Heart, something that will undoubtedly stick with me for a long time:
“When you first become an artist… You’re in a raw, natural state, with hidden gems inside. You need to dig down deep and find the emeralds tucked away inside you. And that’s just the beginning. Once you’ve found your gems, you have to polish them. It takes a lot of hard work. Oh, and here’s the tricky part. Look at the crack in the geode. You see that big green crystal there? You could spend years polishing that, and it wouldn’t be worth much at all. The smaller crystals are much more valuable. And there may be some even deeper inside that you can’t see.”
I hope you continue to keep digging and polishing, even when times are tough.
Its not like I didn’t write at all - I’m working on a pretty in depth piece about incels that just needs more work. I also don’t think now is the right time to release such a thing
Technically there are also doubles matches (2v2) but nobody cares about those
A “bagel” is a slang term for when a player is unable to win a single game during a set, so a 6-0 result. Bagels are very hard to pull off, so her ability to bake them at this point in her career is very impressive.