Some people don’t get sports. And that’s ok. Your interests
and mine don’t need to align. But if you try to tell me it’s just a hand
hitting a ball then I’d have to disagree. The layers of beauty and insight that
I’ve found in sports go far beyond the training of muscle memory. When I look
at sports, this is what I see:
Sport is life consolidated. It takes all of those ups and
downs, twists and turns and condenses them from weeks or months or years into
moments. Then it throws all of them at you and asks you-- now how good can you be?
Like anything else you do, how you play is a function of who you are.
Who are you in success? Who are you in failure? How gracefully can you navigate
between the two? Do you let the context of your situation determine who you’ll
be or do you take it as an opportunity to express yourself?
Can you take control of your body and your mind and your
heart and set them all on the same course?
Because that is simultaneously what sport asks of us, and
the gift that sport gives to us. And there is an undeniable beauty in its
achievement.
On the money as always Cass. Let me add this. Add to that equation the idea that though life and sport act out on different plains, imitating each other in so many ways, often the dimensions collide and that is where we discover how resilient we can be. Courage is having play be the last thing on your mind, and still finding a way to block out life, and play anyway.
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