Wild Card Energy
For anyone waiting to feel ready, ranked or officially invited.
Arthur Fery wasn’t supposed to be waking up today as a Wimbledon semi-finalist.
Everything went against him - the rankings, the draw and the fact he arrived as a wild card, which is basically sport’s way of saying, “We’ll let you in, but don’t get ideas.”
Fortunately for everyone, he got ideas.
This week, Fery has done what wild cards aren’t meant to do. He kept winning and kept behaving as though he belongs on the biggest court in tennis, even when the numbers suggested otherwise.
Which got me thinking, there is something deeply appealing about a wild card, not just in sport, but in life.
The wild card is the person who hasn’t followed the traditional route or the one who came late to the party. Maybe they have an unconventional CV, a second act, a gap in confidence, a history of rejection emails, a file full of almosts and a stubborn little voice that still whispers, “But what if?”
Most of us know the feeling of waiting to be chosen or to feel that we are fully ready before we make a significant life change. We wait until we have enough evidence that we are allowed to want what we want. We tell ourselves we will submit the book when it is perfect or start the business when we feel confident.
But wild cards don’t get guarantees - they get an opening and then they have to walk through it. And that’s the part I keep thinking about. It’s not the winning, although obviously winning is lovely and I am very much in favour of it! It’s more the walking onto court before the result is known. It is the willingness to believe before the world has caught up.
There is a particular kind of courage in backing yourself when you don’t yet have the receipts and I don’t believe it’s arrogance. Arrogance says, “I deserve this more than everyone else”, but belief says, “I’m allowed to try.” That’s a very different thing.
And perhaps that’s where many of us get stuck. We confuse belief with ego. We worry that if we say, even privately, “I think I can do this,” someone will leap out from behind a hedge with a clipboard and ask for proof. So we shrink the dream until it sounds reasonable. We make it smaller, safer and less embarrassing.
Sometimes we all need wild card energy. The kind that says “I know this looks unlikely, I haven’t arrived by the usual route and the odds are not in my favour, but I am here now, so I may as well play”.
That feels useful this week. For anyone who has had a rejection email or is starting again. For anyone wondering whether they are deluded or determined. Maybe the question is not, “Am I good enough to be here?” but “What would I do today if I believed I had a chance?”
Sometimes life doesn’t hand us a top seed, a five-year plan or a standing ovation. Sometimes it hands us a wild card and the bravest thing we can do is use it.
Go on Arthur!