Resilience and change
Wimbledon Season
Sometimes we remember our lives not by calendars, but by tournaments. I had a CV season of my own. A new application every day… A little hope in every email… An unseen disappointment in every silence…
Sometimes we remember our lives not by calendars, but by tournaments.
I had a CV season of my own.
A new application every day…
A little hope in every email…
An unseen disappointment in every silence…
Then another season began.
Changing jobs…
Changing homes…
Moving…
Simplifying…
Building new routines…
In those days, my phone rang most often with the voices of family and friends.
They wanted to know how I was.
‘How are you?’
‘Do you need anything?’
There was love in those questions.
But sometimes you do not feel like answering.
Because some seasons are lived more than they are explained.
And really, anyone can have seasons like these.
Some while changing jobs…
Some while reconsidering a relationship…
Some while moving to another city…
Some while realising that the life they have lived for years is beginning to look different to them…
Within things that look the same from outside, everyone is playing a match of their own.
I think I now understand better why watching Wimbledon this year moved me so much.
People talk about the trophies.
The records…
The number of Grand Slams…
But I found myself drawn to something else.
The drive on the court…
The flexibility…
The mental resilience…
The ability to lose a point and begin the next as if nothing had happened…
As I watched the matches, I realised…
The spectators applaud the final point.
The trophy…
The champion…
Yet nobody talks about the thousands of points played before that last one.
Nobody sees the early-morning training sessions…
The lost opening sets…
The matches played with injuries…
The moments when they chose not to give up…
…all of that goes unseen.
Perhaps that is why tennis had never felt so real to me.
Because, it turns out, I had been playing a similar match on my own court for the past few years.
A job interview ends in rejection…
The next day, you send out your CV again.
You move home…
You build a new routine.
You worry about money…
But the next morning, you sit down at your computer again.
After every lost point, you serve again as though the score has been reset.
Life is a little like Wimbledon, too.
From outside, all you see is the trophy ceremony.
Yet the real story is written on courts where nobody is watching.
Looking back today, I can see that the focus of my life has changed.
I used to save new job listings.
Now I explore ways of working freelance.
I used to wonder, ‘When will they call me?’
Now I look at homes I could buy.
I plan trips abroad.
I look into the cars I like.
The questions have changed.
So the game must have changed, too.
Today, news of mass redundancies comes from companies I once sent my CV to.
My heart aches.
Because there are people there who are still struggling.
It teaches me this:
Sometimes, a job you did not get turns out, years later, to have been a decision that protected you.
Perhaps this was the longest match of my life.
In every set, I lost something different.
But in every set, I gained a different kind of resilience.
When I look back now, I see the game, not the trophy.
Because being a champion was not about winning the final point.
It was about finding the courage to return to the game, every time.
And perhaps the greatest victory…
Was overcoming not your opponent, but the urge to give up, on courts where nobody was watching.
Life records not the day you lift the trophy, but the days you choose not to leave the court.