As young boy, I longed to be a professional athlete. But soon I had to accept the unwelcome fact that I simply wasn’t gifted with an athlete’s body. Speed, strength, coordination, instinct, vision – I got by in ordinary life with what I had been given of these, but I wasn’t physically robust enough to be an athlete.
It took me some years to make peace with that, but it took even longer, well into mid-life, before I came both to acknowledge and give thanks for the fact that, while I wasn’t blessed with an athlete’s body, I had been given robust mental health, and that this was a mammoth, undeserved blessing, more important for life than an athlete’s body. I had often wondered what it would be like to have an athlete’s body, to possess that kind of speed, strength and grace. But I had never wondered what it must be like not to have a strong, steady, resilient mind, one that knows how to return a lob, split a defence, not be afraid of contact, absorb a hit, and not let the rigours of the game break you.
