Is Roger Federer Happy?
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It was never my intention to to make this a spirituality blog about Roger Federer. I already wrote one post about Federer in this blog and and it seems he is turning out to be a good topic for spiritual matters. After winning Wimbledon on Sunday and thereby breaking the all time grand slam record in tennis, he achieved the ultimate in the sport. In the post match press conference the media asked him whether he is now the happiest man on earth:
Q. Do you feel like you’re the happiest person right now?
ROGER FEDERER: I don’t know. I mean, I’m very happy. I don’t know if I’m the happiest person in the world. I don’t think so. I think there’s many happy people out there. Tennis doesn’t make you ‑‑ tennis doesn’t do it all for me. There’s more to life than just tennis. But I feel great.
http://www.wimbledon.org/en_GB/news/interviews/2009-07-05/200907051246792657171.html
You would think he would be pretty happy by achieving such an amazing feat, an almost divine feat. It as great to see that he had that perspective, because tennis is just a game, and it’s about competition. If this isn’t proof that competition can’t make you happy I don’t know what is. Roger Federer has achieved perfection in tennis now, he has transcended the sport. You would think that makes a person extremely happy. For me this is just proof that competition is very overrated. The problem with competition is that for every winner there must be a loser. No player can win all the time.
We are a competitive society. Supposedly happiness depends on how well you compete, how much status you can achieve, how much money you make, how much sex you have etc. But the truth is that these things never fulfill people. No matter how much you acquire you can always have more. Another thing that Federer said after he was asked whether he would lose motivation now that he has achieved the most important record he said no, because he wasn’t playing to break records in the first place, but because he loved the game. That was another great answer I thought. The same thing can be applied to life.
If you really find that inner happiness and enjoy the journey of life, whatever you gain in life of material possessions or status won’t matter all that much. Once you find your spiritual self, your true immortal self, all these outer things become insignificant ultimately. Roger Federer has achieved the ultimate, he is a legend, he has all the money he could ever want, yet he still feels there are many people happier then him. He also loves the process, and the records are of lesser importance. I think there is a lot to learn from Federer in terms of spirituality…
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