Pickleball, Physics, and Love in a Dying World

This is not just sport. It is communion.

I competed in the Pickleball Dutch Open in Holland in 2024 and won a bronze medal with my partner.

The pickleball court is small, and the paddle light in my hand. The ball arcs high, its plastic flight as deliberate as the morning sun. There is a rhythm to this game—a kind of heartbeat. Back and forth, the ball connects us, a thread pulled tight and slackened, weaving together players, air, and gravity. In this simple game, I find a microcosm of existence. A reflection of the world as it is and as it could be.

The court bustles with every kind—swift and steady, young and weathered, all bound by the love of the game. Retirees seeking camaraderie. Teens hungry for competition. A young mother laughing with her child, their shoes squeaking on the painted lines. Here, on this unassuming rectangle, humanity gathers in its strange, beautiful multiplicity. We are different, but for a moment, we are one—united by the bounce of a ball and the thwack of paddles meeting its arc. This is not just sport. It is communion.

But it is also a paradox. I think of the universe’s own game of pickleball, the cosmic dance of atoms and forces. Each hit of the ball mirrors the push and pull of particles at the quantum level. The spin of the ball, governed by invisible laws, speaks to the physics that binds us all. The court itself, the people on it, the air we breathe—we are nothing but stardust, spun from the collapse of long-dead stars. And yet, here we are, alive and hitting a ball back and forth as if it matters.

It does matter. We matter. This is what I’ve come to believe, here on the edge of a suffering world. The game matters because it is a defiance of despair. Every swing of the paddle is a testament to life’s absurd beauty, a refusal to bow to entropy. In a culture obsessed with the grand and the monumental, pickleball whispers a quieter truth: that joy is found in shared, direct and embodied experience.

And yet, I cannot ignore the shadows that creep at the edges of the court. The climate warms. Species vanish. Where are the insects? To play pickleball in this world is an act of rebellion. It is to say, I will love in spite of it all. The ball spins, and with it, so does my hope—fragile, persistent. The game becomes a meditation, a prayer, a declaration that life, even in its most precarious moments, is worth living.

Pickleball reminds me that connection is not optional. The game demands it. You cannot play alone. The court insists on relationship, on a dialogue of movement and intent. This is the essence of cosmoerotic humanism: the recognition that we are not isolated beings but part of an intricate web of existence. We are unique, yes, but our uniqueness only shines in relation to others. The ball moves because of us. The game exists because we agree to play.

In this way, pickleball mirrors love. Not the fleeting, romanticized version, but the deep, enduring kind—the love that holds space for both joy and sorrow, for laughter and tears. The love that sees another and says, I am here with you. This love is an act of creation, a choice to engage with life even when it is hard, even when the world seems to be unraveling.

As I watch the ball spin, I think of physics. Of the way reality falls apart at 10^-33 centimeters, where the effects of quantum mechanics and gravity become important and space-time is doomed. Of the forces that hold atoms together, that pull galaxies apart. I think of how love, like gravity, is a force we cannot see but feel deeply. It binds us, sustains us, propels us forward. On this court, I am reminded that love is not abstract. It is the ball in motion, the shared laughter, the gentle teasing over a missed shot. It is the way we show up for each other, again and again, even when we’re tired, even when it feels like the world is at war with itself.

The game ends, as all games must. We tap paddles, a unique moment of intimacy. The court empties, and I am left with the echo of footsteps, the faint imprint of a ball on my palm. Outside, the world continues its relentless march toward uncertainty. But for a while, we were here. We played. We connected. We loved.

→ Read about my journey from loss and abuse to healing and spiritual awakening in my memoir, What My Brother Knew.

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