Attribution Syndrome

When it all goes wrong; in spite of the practice, the training, the profound desire to perform...we vent our spleen all over ourselves. We swear foul oaths, abuse our racket, and drive the ball into the fence. Our tantrum would make a two-year-old child blush. But towards whom do we direct all of this anger? Not our opponents - that would be rude. Not ourselves - we love ourselves despite the occasional self-recrimination: "Spaz!"... "You're so WEAK!"... "Wake the [heck] up!".

Interspersed with the verbal self-flagellation, however, are usually a lot of variations on the theme; "...oh my GOD!"...Jesus CHRIST!..."What the [heck]!" God is the real target of our fury. God has failed us; made us temporarily (or permanently) uncoordinated, weak, stupid and (athletically) impotent. God has cursed us, and there seems to be nothing we can do about it!

This is a well recognized psychological condition generally referred to as "religious attribution." It is the sense that God is punishing us for some transgression by messing up our tennis game. Yes, when you find yourself in this mood, you are not thinking clearly. Your brain is muddled by hormones and neurotransmitters released in response to deep frustration and disappointment, so you revert to an infantile state. The ego takes over and immediately looks for a scapegoat, so it does not have to take responsibility for your rather putrid play. Even the invectives you hurl at yourself refer to things beyond your control - you didn't decide to be stupid, practice being spastic or lift weights to be weak. It makes sense that those conditions must have been imposed upon you by some malevolent, supernatural entity.

Attribution is not helpful, especially for those of us not "blessed" with natural athletic ability. We need to take responsibility for our errors, gaffes, and bloopers so we can turn frustration into motivation and positive energy. Tennis is a tough sport, and there is always more to learn about it. We learn nothing, aspire to nothing and will achieve nothing when we blame deities for our difficulties. The answer is a simple one - the most egregious error you can commit is all your fault, but that is O.K. If tennis could be mastered, like tic-tack-toe, nobody would bother with it. If it were like track or football - with success being completely dependent on how fast you were born to run - victory would be forever beyond our reach. It is the very unconquerable nature of the game that makes it interesting and accessible to the talentless.

Beyond Attribution

So much for what you have to do and why, now for the how. The how is the hard part, especially if one tends to approach problems with reason. Reason depends for its effectiveness on the truth of its precepts. Garbage in, garbage out. How can one reliably convert knowledge into action if the knowledge is false or fantastical? This is not a small question - we are asked to do that very thing a hundred times a day. There is not a shred of information that impinges on our consciousness that is not processed, distorted, massaged, manipulated, manufactured, cherry-picked, exaggerated, minimized or just made up by others, our egos or by the very processes of perception. Reality, if not just a dream, is certainly not real. So how does this solve our attribution problem? The key is to accept that we are awash in a sea of distortion. We can't even trust our estimation of our own performance. After all, a miss hit over the fence is a laugh riot on a good day and an affront to our self-worth on a bad one. They are both the same shot! Assigning blame to supernatural powers is merely a desperate attempt to avoid embracing our own helplessness - to put the outcome into the hands of a deity with whom we can bargain, or befriend or prostrate ourselves. The alternative is simply to accept and embrace our own powerlessness, imperfection, and inconsistency. Doing so puts us into resonance with reality and with the rest of humankind, for everyone is the same in that regard. Some opponents are bigger, some are stronger or faster, and some have sharper eyes or greater grit. They are still beatable, and beating them is quite an accomplishment. Superior innate athletic ability is as much a curse as a blessing, for where is that truly worthy adversary? Beating an un-gifted person may fill one with arrogant self-satisfaction, like a 6th grader beating up a 3rd grader, but where is the joy in that? The hardest thing for humans to do is embrace their impotence, but doing so is the secret of happiness. When you stop trying to win the club tournament and make your goal just trying to improve your game, you have closed the door on misery and opened the door to never-ending bliss. You have discovered the true meaning of faith and with that knowledge unlocked the secret passage to the Zone.