With ‘Open,’ Agassi has Opened Me Up to the World

Upon reading Open, the excellent autobiography by Andre Agassi, I’ve realized it’s past time I open myself up to the world and use this medium as it was intended. As the name implies, Go Gonzo Journal is meant to be a journal, but for too long I’ve painstakingly perfected every word of content before it’s published at GoGonzoJournal.com, as if it were newsprint. Agassi’s Open has taught me to stop pursuing perfection, stop pursuing all impossibilities, focusing instead on what I can control given what I’ve got.

Spoiler alert: Andre Agassi hated tennis most of his life. In fact, until he married Steffi Graf, he hated tennis like I hate writing, which is why I was so drawn in to his autobiography. The only two things either of us do well we hate. Tennis, like writing, is torturous, especially in the social media age. And if you’re as unfiltered and enraged as I often am, publishing your thoughts online and inviting scrutiny into your depressing life isn’t exactly healthy. Like Andre at his best on the court, I’m saying, “Fuck it. Don’t think, just feel.”

I was a fan of Agassi immediately, and not for the hair or the jean shorts. I liked Andre’s game given the body with which he was working. Andre was short, lacking a big serve, so his father made him a returner of serve. He also drilled him damn near to death, turning his son into an assassin. When I first watched him play, I loved his attempts to hit a winner on damn near every shot. But the perfect shot is seldom a passing shot.

Agassi’s comeback was something anyone could get behind. Old men and women doing things they ought not be able to do is always inspiring. But the absolute opposite way in which Agassi did it made it even more inspiring. Agassi was now all the guys I hated playing in high school, returning everything softly, safely, and letting me screw up. It was obviously effective, but I was unable to contain my rage in my youth, letting lesser players make me look like I didn’t belong on the court. In some cases I wasn’t mentally fit to be there.

I’m still not mentally fit to be many places. There are moments when the simplest of things enrage me to the point of screaming obscenities. After I finished Open and tried to borrow the memoir written by Agassi’s ghostwriter on the book, J.R. Moehringer. But my ereader wouldn’t cooperate, which has been an ongoing issue (fucking Overdrive). I scream at the device that just recently brought me roughly 10 hours of joy. It’s not unlike the unrelenting barrage of obscenities I used to scream at myself and my tennis racquet while struggling with a “returner” on the court. But I need to stop expecting perfection from myself, from my things, and from everyone else and their things.

From this point forth Go Gonzo Journal will serve as a means for me to regularly journal my thoughts and feelings. Instead of letting the torturous act of writing control me, I shall control the one thing I can control relatively well: the English language. I will no longer pursue perfection; I will pursue pain, for it’s pain that prepares us for success and failure in life.