Miro was an Egyptian table tennis national team player back in his heyday. So he really knows how to play. His advice:

“Rohan, this sport is all about practice. If you practice, you will get better, whether you like it or not. Practice. Play with all sorts of people with different styles. If you want to fix problems, come to me… but know that nothing comes quickly. There is no magic in ping pong. Just keep playing.”

Miro is over seventy now, and he had a forty-year break from ping pong. But he still comes back to play. When I’m partners with someone in ping pong, I apologize a lot for missing shots. But Miro says, “Don’t be sorry. You play beautifully.” I do make beautiful shots. I know that cognitively, but not deep-down. Because when I play ping pong, I focus on the one in ten shots missed, not the nine out of ten shots made.

I played doubles with Miro and a woman named Lynn. Lynn is competitive; she’s the type of person who will look like she wants to throw her racket down when she misses a shot. In watching Lynn, I feel the ridiculousness of my own rage. I too have such feelings, like the anger and self-flagellation of missing a crucial serve.

I remember talking something similar with my friends Leon and Alicia. We talked about how during a “performance,” the feeling of tension and stress can be overwhelming. But the reason I play ping, and the reason Leon said he plays piano, is for the joy of the art-form itself.

But such anger is self-defeating and egotistical. To play well, you must have your wits about you. And you must enjoy it (the key word is play). I reflect that changing how I react to my emotional impulses and changing how I react to a bouncing ping pong are similarly difficult. Such change happens slowly, bit by bit, not all at once. Patience. I learned this Chinese proverb lately:

It’s easy to change mountains and rivers, but hard to change a person’s nature. 江山易改 本性難移.

Okay, my final thought. Roger Federer did a commencement speech at Dartmouth last spring. He shared an interesting statistic. In the height of his prowess as world champion, he won 80% of his matches. But in all those matches, he only won 54% of the points. He reflects on two take-away lessons:

1. Four percent can be the difference between great and average.
2. Even the greatest tennis player in the world loses 46% of points. He too has to learn to move on gracefully from failure.