Sports is a marvelous human creation. I was a competitive tennis player growing up and playing tennis has taught me how to win, how to lose, and has given me some of the most precious and beautiful memories of my life. It was my dad who first got me into tennis. He was very much into playing competitive ping pong, much more popular and respected as a legitimate sport in China. But I don’t think I would’ve ever been an athlete if I were able to turn back the clocks and had a choice in the matter.
Outside of playing tennis, I’m not a very big sports person. I don’t watch sports on TV, I don’t feel loyalty to any teams, I just find it kind of boring unless I’m engaged in it. Yet, western society seems to harbor this unspoken notion that the masculine man should be into sports. I remember when I was in college, I sort of bought into that persona. I even subscribed to ESPN magazine, but ended up not reading single page of it because I just could not muster up any interest.
One of the beauties of growing older is that we begin to shed some of the facades we embraced as children and adolescents to fit in. I take that for granted sometimes, and I really shouldn’t.
The Ivory Tower 
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