Heartfulness Sport – PART 3

PAOLO LEZZELLE draws simple parallels between the Heartfulness system and sport, in this article focusing primarily on authenticity and creativity.

- PAOLO LEZZELLE

“Education is that which remains, if one has forgotten everything he learned at school.” quoted by Albert Einstein

A story

In my personal opinion John McEnroe has been the greatest tennis genius of all time, superior even to Roger Federer. McEnroe didn’t play better tennis than Federer, which is quite impossible, but his game was so original, unpredictable, creative and extraordinarily talented, that no one was ever able to imitate him. In contrast, in the course of time many Federer imitators have appeared on the scene, some of them very highly ranked, while Federer remained the most successful and elegant player. Nonetheless, John, that quick-tempered brat from New York, was simply unique.

After a fast escalation to become the top seed in tennis, and after keeping that position for some years, John got a little lost in the meanderings of life and went down the ladder. His friend and epic rival, Bjorn Borg, had quit the scene at quite a young age and in the meantime true war machines were emerging, like Ivan Lendl, who based their strength on extremely strict programs for athletic training, diet, concentration, and care for all aspects of the game. All this was relatively new for the ’80s. In sport in general, there was still a lot of space for a level of lightness, for a kind of poetry, and for moral values to be upheld. The world of sport was full of human stories that maybe today would sound ridiculous. Since those days everything has slowly degraded, but this is another subject.