A while back during Monday Morning Mussar, I quoted a passage from Andrei Agassi's autobiography "Open" about the challenges of maintaining effective teshuva. Here it is, tell me what you think:
Change.
Time to change, Andre. You can’t go on like this. Change, change, change—I say this word to myself several times a day, every day, while buttering my morning toast, while brushing my teeth, less as a warning than as a soothing chant. Far from depressing me, or shaming me, the idea that I must change completely, from top to bottom, brings me back to center. For once I don’t hear the nagging self-doubt that follows every personal resolution. I won’t fail this time, I can’t, because it’s change now or change never. The idea of stagnating, of remaining this Andre for the rest of my life, that’s what I find truly depressing and shameful.
And yet. Our best intentions are often thwarted by external forces—forces that we ourselves set in motion long ago. Decisions, especially bad ones, create their own kind of momentum, and momentum can be a [pain] to stop, as every athlete knows. Even when we vow to change, even when we sorrow and atone for our mistakes, the momentum of our past keeps carrying us down the wrong road. Momentum rules the world. Momentum says: Hold on, not so fast, I’m still running things here. As a friend likes to say, quoting an old Greek poem: The minds of the everlasting gods are not changed suddenly.
By the way, the rest of the book was also surprising good and thought-provoking - I highly recommend it, even if you don't care about tennis.
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