Results: Assessing the Preservation of Meaningful Activity on the Tennis Court

The present chapter draws on the results from the author’s autoethnography of playing tennis as well as doing science from a meaningful perspective. Here, it was found that something meaningful and hence preservable comes into being if it fulfills multiple demands of the person as well as its social environment (myth<>fantasm interaction). Hence, conservative actions are inherently polyvalent and do not only satisfy one significant need of the person but also a given need structure that is interrelated. For instance, playing tennis is not only meaningful from an athletic perspective but also from a social one because it brings people together that share the social need of belonging and doing more than merely hitting the ball. Moreover, a tennis club becomes a place where a person can try to realize its private needs with a given structure and can thus consolidate not only her person but also the structure in which the person participates in—a prerequisite for engaging in meaningful activities. Hence, something becomes preservable because it allows polyvalent actions to take place. This perspective is further applied to the domain of doing science.