Virtuosity

This year’s Wimbledon was awash in pleasure chemicals as my mirror neurons got to experience the pure joy that comes with hard-won achievement. My admiration accumulated throughout the tournament, impressed by the physical intelligence and determination. It’s one of the reasons I watch tennis, for the uplift that comes from watching people who invest it all, a visible commitment. When I first discovered tennis by accident, it was the expression on Bjorn Borg’s face that caught me. I felt honored to see so deeply into a face exposed by intense concentration. This year, when Coco Gauff, at 15, beat legendary Venus Williams at 37, I got choked up with her, stirred by high grade empathy through the mirror neuron system.

This year’s Wimbledon ended with a historic match between legendary Roger Federer and the current number one, the intense and explosive Novak Djokovic. Five hours of such high quality tennis, it could have gone either way. Djokovic came out on top in an amazing battle between the best. As is always the case watching a great match, I felt improved by the opportunity to experience the sensations of triumph and the quickened urge to strive in my own work.

Whenever I watch tennis I find myself thinking about virtuosity, the places the culture encourages it and the places it doesn’t. No one would argue with the authority of winning a championship. Sports excellence is part of our cultural ethos so I wonder what it means that individual skillfulness has been discouraged in schools in an effort to equalize. This ignores the capability of every student to achieve in their own way. Each student should be able to experience for themselves a sense of genuine achievement, starting with finding things they love to do.

Improving at something and all the attendant good brain chemistry is available at any level.

There are unexplored layers of skills in the spectrum between knowledge of computer systems to video games and that’s just one area. The increasing use of visual organization of information is enabling us to juggle larger concepts and use mental capacities that have been ignored.

I remember a study done at a time when time watching TV was at its height showing that a person’s mood worsened the longer they watched. The same would also be true of watching YouTube. Today’s knowledge about brain chemistry shows that dopamine is stimulated by activity, that challenge is best of all because it commands full attention and full attention is the zone. Good brain chemistry comes with effort, building skills, learning new things, extending understanding of who we are by what we choose to do. The ability to get better and better at something stimulates a general confidence no matter what it is.