Open

by Andre Agassi

Life will throw everything but the kitchen sink in your path, and then it will throw the kitchen sink. It’s your job to avoid the obstacles. If you let them stop you or distract you, you’re not doing your job, and failing to do your job will cause regrets that paralyze you more than a bad back.

Please let this be over. I don’t want it to be over.

Stefanie kisses me and says nothing, because there’s nothing to say.

Given all that lies beyond my control, I obsess about the few things I can control, and racket tension is one such thing.

Thinking, my father believes, is the source of all bad things, because thinking is the opposite of doing.

I no longer need my father to torture me. From this day on, I can do it all by myself.

When you know that you just took the other guy’s best punch, and you’re still standing, and the other guy knows it, you will rip the heart right out of him.

It’s not just that I’ve never met a rich kid. I’ve also never met a kid with a subscription.

What new sin can I commit to show the world I’m unhappy and want to go home?

I sit on a bench, basking in the sunshine. I tell myself: You’re fourteen years old, and you never have to go to school again. From now on, every morning will feel like Christmas and the first day of summer vacation, combined.

He doesn’t have any answers, he says. He just happens to have read the Bible a few dozen times, front to back, and he has some observations to share.

When the thought crosses my mind that I’m on the verge of losing my fourth slam final, I casually set that thought aside.

A win doesn’t feel as good as a loss feels bad, and the good feeling doesn’t last as long as the bad. Not even close.

I’m struck by how fast the surreal becomes the norm. I marvel at how unexciting it is to be famous, how mundane famous people are. They’re confused, uncertain, insecure, and often hate what they do. It’s something we always hear—like that old adage that money can’t buy happiness—but we never believe it until we see it for ourselves.

Glasses shook. Flatware rattled. The bones in my ribs and wrist vibrated. I briefly thought someone had put one of Barbra’s albums on a Bose sound system and turned the volume up full blast. I couldn’t believe that a human being was capable of producing that much sound, that a human voice could pervade every square inch of a room.

Pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world. He tells them: We are like blocks of stone…[T]he blows of His chisel, which hurt us so much, are what make us perfect.

Control what you can control.

I stand and feel an overpowering urge to forgive, because I realize that my father can’t help himself, that he never could help himself, any more than he could understand himself. My father is what he is, and always will be, and though he can’t help himself, though he can’t tell the difference between loving me and loving tennis, it’s love all the same. Few of us are granted the grace to know ourselves, and until we do, maybe the best we can do is be consistent. My father is nothing if not consistent.

It’s the only way I can allow myself to feel in the Summer of Revenge. Pride is bad, stress is good. I don’t want to feel confident. I want to feel rage. Endless, all-consuming rage.

This is the only perfection there is, the perfection of helping others. This is the only thing we can do that has any lasting value or meaning. This is why we’re here. To make each other feel safe.

C. S. Lewis doesn’t become fully alive, doesn’t grow up, until he opens himself to love. Love is how we grow up,

I stare at the back of the seat in front of me and think how fragile it all is. The next six months will tell. To which of us does that dire statement not apply?

Momentum says: Hold on, not so fast, I’m still running things here. As a friend likes to say, quoting an old Greek poem: The minds of the everlasting gods are not changed suddenly.

This is why we’re here. To fight through the pain and, when possible, to relieve the pain of others. So simple. So hard to see.

we must all care for one another—this is our task in life.

I will never again take for granted the privilege of hurting on a tennis court.

Always, always, always, go down with both guns blaaazing.

While talking to her I go skiing around the living room in my sweat socks. I schuss across the wood floors.

I don’t have to wonder who’s waiting for me in the final. It’s Pete. As always, Pete.

Andre, he says, some people are thermometers, some are thermostats. You’re a thermostat. You don’t register the temperature in a room, you change it.

If I’ve learned nothing else, it’s that time and practice equal achievement.

If I’d beaten Pete more often, or if he’d come along in a different generation, I’d have a better record, and I might go down as a better player, but I’d be less.

I play and keep playing because I choose to play. Even if it’s not your ideal life, you can always choose it. No matter what your life is, choosing it changes everything.

I enjoy that sense we all seek, that knowledge we get only a few times in life, that the themes of our life are connected, the seeds of our ending were there in the beginning,

The essence of good discipline is respect. Respect for authority and respect for others. Respect for self and respect for rules. It is an attitude that begins at home, Is reinforced at school, And is applied throughout life.