TT Rambles: Energy and its transfer

So often real insights come from serendipity that we expect no sane person to just sit down and write a "Book of Insights" about anything. But maybe another rambling blog post be allowed?

Table tennis is a sport of stubborn plateaus - that mustn't come as a surprise observation. One is not likely to slip and fall down tumbling hard -- both figuratively and literally -- in this safest of sports. Broken limbs and twisted elbows? No way, it's a gentleman's sport of pure skill and comparative leisure. But it also abhors stagnancy and confronts its most ardent players with inescapable stretches of plateau.

How does one reach a higher point in table tennis after all the basic practice is done? Perhaps it's the need to carry the "weight of massive talent" -- commentators of the professional circuit have said the process involves fully exhausting and then renewing oneself. I can only guess that must be true. How then does the idea of energy flow -- or energy transfer -- provide clues about how to climb the skill ladder?  Energy transfer happens when two players can feel each others' hand without even touching. It is a feeling unlike any other, in any sport or game. Being an energy pair in table tennis is therefore an esoteric and rare object to know. One could also say it's the universal language of all racket sports.

Energy transfer between two people is not permanent -- it can be lost, sometimes seemingly overnight. It's also close to life in a way the layman can understand -- just as one might lose a partner after a certain connection ends, there's often someone else waiting. "Ni hao jiu dou mei zai lai" - in Chinese "you've not come in a long time" could be a poetical lament why the passage of time might seem a blank for solo players of the sport, yet, the forces of the world are not human dependent; they are impersonal and permeate even the most windswept corners of the planet. But is there a more windswept setting than a court without spectators, an exhausted body without energy transfer? That is just one of the questions that still remain to be pondered, with an answer to be answered.