Unity of Knowledge and Action

Table tennis is not tennis

China is the kingdom of table tennis where Ping-pong is the most popular sport. As a Chinese student, I came to the states and was regarded as a good table tennis player automatically. I had played Ping-pong but I was never good at it because there were too good players in China. Soon, I was asked to play table tennis with my American friends. I was quite surprised that I even beat most of them at table tennis. I started to think of tennis, not table tennis, the same racket sport, just playing on the ground instead. I thought I could be at least as good as table tennis. One day, I was invited by a group of Japanese students to play tennis. It was my first time stepping on a tennis court. I borrowed their racket and tried to rally with them. I found out that I was wrong. Tennis was very different than table tennis, extremely difficult to control the ball in turn of distance and direction. It ends up that I spent more time picking up the ball than hitting it. It was a pretty embarrassing experience.

Sow a thought and reap an action

After that failed attempt, I decided to learn how to play tennis, particularly controlling the tennis ball. The only way to do that is to practice. I bought a tennis racket but I was afraid of playing on the tennis court. I knew I was not good enough to play with anyone. I went to a park where there was a big green wall like a stand-up tennis court, where I could hit the ball against the wall. In the beginning, I only hit one or two times before the ball flew away. I tried adjusting the force and direction when I hit the ball. After a few practices, I could hit the ball many times with no stop. Gradually, I mastered the direction and distance when I hit the ball. From there, I tried to hit on running from forehand and backhand. With a couple of months of practice, I finally felt comfortable hitting the tennis ball in the direction and distance I want to. Playing tennis was enjoyable. The more I played and the better I was. I returned to the tennis court and became a tennis player, at least pretending to be one. I played tennis mainly for mental and physical exercise. I never paid anyone to teach me how to play. Because it is just one of my hobbies, I like to watch people play and learn from these techniques I think it is suitable for me. My formula is to sow a thought, reap an action; and sow an action, reap a habit; and sow a habit, reap a character. Through these years of playing tennis, my tennis friends know what my character is.

Power vs. Consistency

Moving up the tennis skills ladder, we always face the choice to have more power or be more consistent. Powerful shots can give your opponents less time to react and difficulty to return the ball, but it is hard to control when you try to hit powerful shots. On the other hand, if you want to have more control, you have to put less force when you hit the ball. This way, your opponents can be easier to return your shots. Experienced players know how to balance power and consistency according to the situation. The tennis rules imply when you should consider using your power and when to keep your consistency. For example, when in the service game, the first serve is better to have a powerful shot, and the second serve is to have a consistent or better control hit because according to the rule when the first serve fails, the second serve counts the real play. This provides an opportunity to allow a player to strike for the best performance and maximum ability level. In addition to the service game, the scoring system also needs to pay attention to the different situations. How to play deuce points, breakpoints, or set points, the time depends on the choice of power vs. consistency that a player has and his or her opponent’s style. A practical way to think about is the speed and angle when you generate each shot.

Put the knowledge into action

Ideally, a good player should constantly improve both power and consistency in his or her tennis skills. However, not many players can do that, even professional tennis players. Power and consistency are relative to play. This makes tennis a sport, that requires both intelligence and physical capability to play. Good tennis play is to push the limit and raise the level. How can we do it? What we need to do is that knowledge and action are combined into one, so knowledge is the beginning of the action and the action is the completion of knowledge.

If you understand the truth in your heart, but don’t act and practice, just “know” and not “do”, it is tantamount to talking on paper. If the action has been put into practice, but the ability is not good enough, it shows that “cognition” is not enough, and we need to learn and think again. In our popular words, the unity of theory and practice can produce the power to change the world and apply what we have learned. Learn from practice, summarize and reflect on things, and then guide to the new practice. With such repetition, we must not only know not action, or just do it not self-examination to improve progress. The so-called unity of knowledge and action means that knowledge and action should be unified, and knowledge and action should not be separated from each other. Play tennis is just a metaphor for us to resolve many difficult problems. Remember the unity of knowledge and action is the solution when we face challenges.