Achieving the Pinnacle in Life
My wife and I caught part of a news story about the former tennis great, Andrea Yeager, on the TV last night. Andrea was the youngest seeded player in Wimbledon history at 15 years old. Eventually, she rose to the number two ranking in the world. By the age of 19, however, her career was brought to an end with a shoulder injury. People told her she had reached the pinnacle of life and she would never repeat what she accomplished in the first 19 years of her life.
For Andrea, though, tennis was not life. She enjoyed the game but understood there was more. Tennis was only the prelude. She now runs a foundation for children with terminal cancer. These kids come to her camp where tennis is but one of the fun activities she offers them. Her love for tennis has turned into a love for hurting people. Her drive to succeed has switched from personal acclaim to personal humility and service.
Thomas Merton talks about the “primordial ‘yes’” that lives within each of us. This “yes” is not an affirmation of self and what self can do. Rather, this primordial “yes” is the discovery of self through the uniting of my being with the purpose of Being. In other words, the pinnacle of life is never in what we can accomplish for ourselves. It is never about the successes of our talents that push us above others so that we become an idol of the world. Rather, the pinnacle of life is achieved when we fully comprehend what God has for us and join that quest willfully.
The idols our competitive world creates are those who excel at their sport, those entrepeneurs who blow away lesser rivals, and those artists with the most records or acting trophies. These “stars” have reached the pinnacle that our children aspire to. As Andrea Yeager has discovered, however, such stardome is not the “yes” of life. The “yes” is found in something far less selfish and far more rewarding.
You can read more of Andrea’s story here.
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