The challenge of making the extraordinary ordinary is what Filipino tennis star Alexandra Eala faces after several recent matches where she started strong but was unable to sustain the same level of play through the succeeding sets.
Eala has reached the world’s top 20 and has beaten some of the best players in tennis. But her matches in recent weeks have also revealed a pattern worth watching. This is her apparent difficulty in sustaining her best tennis performance over three sets.
We saw it in her defeat to China’s Wang Xiyu at the Asian Games. We saw a similar pattern in her losses to Tatiana Prozorova in the Singapore Open and Amanda Anisimova in the Cincinnati Open.
Eala herself said after the Asian Games match that she had some ups and downs that she and her team would have to process. She has already shown she is capable of extraordinary tennis. The next challenge is making that extraordinary level of play ordinary.
But this is not all about Eala. This is about every Filipino who has the capability to do more than what is demanded or required of them and is expected to do it at that higher level with consistency.
We often admire people who go beyond what is expected of them. But perhaps the bigger challenge is to make these extraordinary acts part of the way we normally behave.
Take the reckless drivers and motorcycle riders who do not respect pedestrian lanes, sometimes putting pedestrians already on the crosswalk at risk. I have seen videos of such incidents on social media. But I wonder whether the person taking the video did anything beyond recording and posting it. Did the person call out violators or provide the video as evidence should the pedestrian decide to file a case?
The same principle applies to civic responsibility.
Filipinos are being asked to sign a petition of the Dapat Isa Lang (Just One) coalition supporting a people’s initiative seeking an anti-political dynasty law. Its proposal would impose restrictions on relatives up to the fourth degree from simultaneously or successively holding elective office.
The initiative asks citizens to do more than complain about politics on social media. Read the proposal, understand what it would do, decide where you stand and make your position known. (Petition at https://d1l.org/)
Translate that to anti-corruption efforts. Be it the misuse of public money, the stealing government resources, or substandard flood control projects that can result in loss of lives and properties.
We can do more than complain on social media. We can become active citizens who let their voices be heard, not simply by clicking the smile, laugh or anger icons on Facebook, but by writing or contacting government leaders and representatives in Congress, joining civic initiatives, reporting wrongdoing and demanding answers.
There is an “Alex Eala” in many of us.
That capacity to surprise others and ourselves in everyday life by doing more than what is expected. But the challenge is in consistency, in doing it again and again in daily acts of humanity, until the extraordinary becomes ordinary.