Like many of you, I watched 19-year old Coco Gauff win the 2023 Women’s Singles Championship at the US Open in early September to clinch her first Grand Slam title.
Her playing was awesome and her on-court acceptance speech was awe-inspiring.
She gave the obligatory thanks to her parents, fans, and supporters. Yet she took a very intentional extra step to also acknowledge and thank her detractors and doubters. Gauff said that instead of putting water on her fire to extinguish it, they served to add gas and fuel her desire to play her best and burn even more brightly.
I thought, wow, what a way to harness negative energy, as well as, “Take that you doubters!”
When people questioned her abilities to take her tennis career any higher than her last win, it’s natural that Gauff would have begun wondering that herself. It might have been enough to extinguish or at least weaken her fire, and meanwhile, it didn’t make her feel good. But as she said herself in post-US Open media coverage:
By definition, trials and tribulations feel bad, especially the ones that happen to us, without our consent, like cancer. Ms. Gauff is choosing tennis, and no matter how bad it gets, tennis won’t kill her and she’ll enjoy some great perks along the way.
But her comments about trials and tribulations making subsequent moments sweeter and using negativity to fuel her fire rather than extinguish it are words of wisdom for all of us. As a person fighting metastatic breast cancer, they resonated with greater strength and clarity. This disease will probably be the cause of my death. In the meantime, it fuels my desire for bringing meaning and purpose to my life. It is the motivation for Stage 4 Living and my writing and speaking efforts.
How ironic that this thing that will ultimately extinguish the fire within my soul can be harnessed to fuel the flame. Oh the yin and yang of it all.