Table tennis is a very challenging sport... I love a good challenge!

Today I played in a table tennis tournament hosted by the Sacramento Table Tennis Club in Rosemont High School somewhere in east Sacramento. I played in three different divisions, the earliest starting at 11:15am, the latest starting at 4:30pm. Even though the actual playing of the sport is the most exhausting aspect of it, I can not emphasize the truly harsh nature of the secondary role as table tennis spectator.

I literally watched thousands of points played today. Of those thousands, I intently focused on a high percentage of them. I am not a scientist by profession but I have to think that the excessive, nearly continuous engagement of my mind and visual sense for such a long period of time is a highly fatiguing situation. Combine that with my poor seating posture on a gym bleacher, lack of regular food consumption, little personal interaction with others, and little change in activity other than the three events I played in personally. To add another aspect to this, in all of the six matches I played I only won one of them... in other words, I also added the stress of personal dissatisfaction to this insidious array of stressors. Now I know I have not painted any of the positive aspects relative to this experience, I hold those in reserve for another time, but does this sound as difficult as one would think it would be? Does it sound confusing as to why I would even want to participate in such a thing?

So I had a somewhat new thought sometime today. I am not too sure why I ran down this line of thinking given the environment I was in at the time but I can see it's relevance.

There is sensory perception of things in a realistic, consistent, physical order. My thought today had to do with what people do with those perceptions. It goes something like this: "People hear and see only what they want to hear and see... What people hear and see is typically skewed by their internal, or intellectual, interpretations." This concept applies quite universally. I, for obvious reasons, saw much application in the context of table tennis. I know, however, after thinking about it for a moment I see how it aptly applies to many more ideas. If I was not so tired right now I might go into further depth on this topic. I find the topic of perception quite rich.

My apologies for the sudden exit... my eyelids seem to be taking turns in the off position.