I just finished five games of ping-pong with the master of synchrony himself, Professor Albaugh. We played an epic series of pong! I’m talking Forest Gump style ping pong, the kind of pong that sows the seed of a retro-romantic longing for a past that can never be re-created…
I used to play ping-pong back in high school, in my musty basement with all of my geeky friends. We’d play for hours and hours, honing our hand eye coordination, and enjoy the masculine nature of competition. One thing I never learned during that time was how to successfully return a slam. If you know anything about ping-pong, then you’ll probably know that when the volley gets heated up, and someone slams on you, if you manage to hit it back, but try to hit it back too hard then you’ll overshoot.
What I’ve learned recently is that in order to return a slam, one has perform a counter-intuitive action, namely to return the ball softly. There’s something profound here too. It takes a certain flexibility of mind, and ability to go from dynamic masculine energy, to a soft a relaxed response in order to do this properly, and in the midst of an intense volley (or any situation really), this can be quite hard. It’s this shifting from poles, being able to in any moment completely switch responses, that is a good metaphor for enlightened action. I think it’s what one of my dear friend’s, Buff Duff, calls state management, where one is able to shift states on a dime, depending on what’s appropriate and what serves that moment. Any activity can be a chance to practice state management and to master the Tao of pong!
