There is an important debate about whether the relevant people, whether in a scientific, business, academic activity, etc., should act as references for society. It is true that none of them should have it as an obligation but it is greatly appreciated that there are many of them that are. Because in this way the rest of us have examples to follow and we can apply, to the best of our ability, attitudes that will work in our favour.
The other day it so happened that during one of the court changes in the match between Nadal and Djokovic, Sabina's formidable song entitled Who Stole the Month of April was played at home. In her verses, one interprets that in the face of the accumulation of setbacks, we all feel how something or someone has stolen valuable time from our lives and that causes us pain by constantly letting ourselves be carried away by emotion. Instead, Rafael Nadal's entire trajectory consists of nothing and no one going to govern his life. He knows that taking your mind back only leads you either to victimhood or to melancholy, taking you away from the present. That taking your eyes to the future only gives you two alternatives, which are to create a brave new world of science fiction or fatalism. Instead, he concentrates on living day to day, which is surely different from the past or else he has nothing to do with the future, and even more so now that he is facing his last years as an athlete. Because living in the moment forces you, yes or yes, to look for solutions to what is not working.
I have written countless times that emotion makes you feel alive and therefore it is necessary for it to exist, but only the correct management of it will allow us to grow and feel successful beyond obtaining the stipulated objectives. It is incredible how Nadal, who suffered a lot to find his tennis against Auger, later recovered. He could doubt about his confrontation with Djokovic. There were many emotional and sporting reasons to project that possibility. I thought that against the Serbian his chances would be to pick up the rhythm of the match as the minutes passed. But it was not like that, in the first second we saw a Nadal with a tennis level that had nothing to do with his previous match and I admit that that moved me. And I thought, very seriously, that I want to be like him.
Sabina tells us in her song that there is the “Failure Inn where there is no consolation or lift and helplessness and humidity share a mattress”. Well, I think Rafa has never entered that inn. And surely this is so because from a very young age he knew that no one and nothing would steal the month of April from him. Please, Rafa, never retire.
