CONTEMPLATING ROGER FEDERER

He shows us what we need to see.

We fell in love with his tennis-playing twenty years ago -- his grace, power, wonderful looks, and his gracious friendly manner. Even if you weren't a sports fan, you wanted him win. And he kept winning.

Then, as his age began to be mentioned with his name, we remembered other great tennis players, who disappeared as they got into their thirties.

Even so, he kept on amazing us.  He keeps on amazing us.

We see a winning spirit that we've never seen before in tennis. He works on tennis, improving his tennis game the way great painters, composers do, conquering faults, flaws, inadequacies -- fearlessly, bravely -- with determination, an undistractible, iron concentration.

Even so, he does not back off from furious shouting, or laughing and joking if he's winning or loosing a set or a point.

Or rejoicing, delighting when he wins.

We feel his sense of himself as an ordinary person, who loves tennis, who like us, lives a normal life,  loving and and caring for his family and his home.

This "regular guy" is truly an artist, and has become an inspiring, very real person who encourages us to keep going, keep working on our work, the way he does.

For me, there's no one in any of the theater, film, music, arts, or sports, that inspires me the way Roger Federer does, and encourages me to keep doing what I do, trying to do it better.