Yesterday I worked a double, and I asked my mom to keep me updated on the US Open final that I automatically assumed Roger Federer would win in 3 or (maybe) 4 sets. Automatic assumption only explains a part of my surety-- for the past 5 years I've had more faith in Roger Federer as invincible than probably anything else in my life, and faith for me is hard to come by.As most sports pages proclaimed today, Federer lost what would have been his 6th straight US Open championship to 20 yr. old Juan Martin del Potro of Argentina, I thought again of the lesson I've repeatedly learned this May thru early September, or what I call "The Summer That Wasn't." Nothing is permanent, nothing lasts.
Often, people find comfort in the simile that "life is like a roller coaster." If you're down now, things are bound to go up. But what about those who are currently at the top of the drop? They don't want to believe that they will fall from the precipice of awesomeness that is their life, but... gravity always wins.
After a summer in which literally everything that happened at the beginning closed in on itself in the end, and nothing that Rebecca and John and I believed would happen actually did happen, including Federer winning the 2009 US Open, I reclaim what I wrote in my diary on 11.29.05: "Don't let me forget to question everything; to keep myself grounded by being grounded in nothing."
So Federer is not a loser, nor is he no longer the best player in the history of tennis. He's just somebody who got kicked from the top of the mountain because that's the way life happens. And even still, after all that's happened, I believe that Fed can come back from this loss. The summer's over, and life goes on. The coaster keeps moving.
