My friend probably doesn’t remember starting my tennis career. To be fair, he was joking.
“You should join the tennis team,” he told me.
I laughed too. The season was already halfway over. I hadn’t grown up playing tennis, had never pictured myself on the team, and had no reason to think I would be good at it. Somehow, though, the coach was willing to put me on the roster.
At that point, I could have laughed off the whole thing and gone home. After all, it had started as a joke..
Instead, before I could overthink it, I said, “I’ll be at practice tomorrow.”
I found out pretty quickly what staying meant. The team needed another player, so I was dropped straight into the Top 6 lineup in the middle of the season. That sounded a lot cooler than it felt. I had joined a team coming off a conference championship, surrounded by players with years more experience than me. Yet, I showed my team just how ready I was during one of my first doubles matches, when I swung at a ball, missed it completely, and saw my racket on the away team’s track field.
I had some catching up to do.
So, even on school nights, I started going to the courts around 8:30 and staying until nearly 11, sometimes practicing alone and sometimes with my dad. Somewhere between those late nights, embarrassing misses, and thousands of repetitions, tennis stopped being something I had tried because of a joke. It became mine. Years later, I found myself on the other side of the net as a coach, feeding balls to younger players and explaining techniques I once struggled to understand.
What still gets me is how little there was at the beginning. No lifelong dream. No plan. Just one comment that made me wonder.
I started noticing how often my most memorable experiences begin that way.
On the way to Machu Picchu, my family had the obvious route in front of us: the bus. Then I noticed a small sign advertising a full-day hike. Barely anyone was around it, and I couldn’t really tell what the hike would involve.
That stuck out to me.
We walked instead.
The day gave us things I never could have put on an itinerary: The amazing town of Aguas Calientes tucked beneath the mountains, a waterfall, an unreasonable number of friendly dogs, and a night spent wandering the village. We met a tour guide along the way, kept talking with him, and eventually found ourselves eating Peruvian food together.
Machu Picchu was incredible. But when I think about that trip, I don’t only remember where we were trying to get. I remember how we got there from sheer curiosity.
Along the way, I noticed a woman weaving and, with the very little Quechua I learned, asked what kind of wool she was using. Instead of just answering, she waved us over. Minutes later, we were following her through an alpaca exhibit I hadn’t known existed.
Nothing life-changing happened. I think that is partly why I like the memory. I could have just kept walking.
For a while, I called this habit “saying yes.” Even the Bhagavad Gita began for me as a year-long program I expected to finish and move on from, only to become a hobby I continued for years and eventually taught.
Though I've always thought “saying yes” feels too passive. I say no to plenty of things. What I have a harder time ignoring is the question underneath them: What happens if I do this?
A silly prank. A hiking sign. A woman weaving.
Most small things most often never become important. I don’t think they need to. I still like plans, and I still care about where I’m going. I just don’t want the destination to make everything around it invisible.
My friend probably forgot the joke that started my tennis career a long time ago.
I’m glad I didn’t.
