Football

I’ve been watching a lot of football. Seriously. I’ve watched more football in the last 2 weeks than I have ever done so in my entire lifetime.

Not that I am a fan of football. No, no. I’ve always considered watching big grown men chasing after a ball a fairly mindless activity. I am not against it, just not into it.

But interestingly enough, with the World Cup on at 3pm, 5pm and 9pm every day, you just have to watch. So I started watching. And I found myself learning about life just by watching football. I won’t name teams, coz honestly, I remember the color of their shirts more than their names or the country they are from.

I learnt perseverance watching teams deny defeat before time is up. And these are like teams after half time with a zero on their score and 2 on their opponents’ score. And I saw teams who gave up. Their game became meaningless.

I learnt that you gotta be ready. There were men who were constantly chasing the ball so hard you feel tired just watching them play. And I really wanted them to score. And yet there were other sluggish teams with members who were clearly caught unaware when the ball came flying their way. And you wonder why they were even playing in the field.

I learnt that even if you are the best, you cannot be conceited coz pride will cause you to make the most silly mistakes.

And finally, I learnt this from watching the Argentineans play - I learnt that like football, life is only a game. Not that it is not important. In fact, when you are out there on the field, play and give it your best and only your best. But not to score. To play.

In the match, the Argentineans played very well, by my amateur football watching standards of course. But it was a 0-0 score. Still, they won my respect by the end of the game. Coz they played hard, never slacked, were good at what they did (in fact, the way they handled the ball was like how our kids used to play cha-tek in void decks) and clearly enjoyed the game. More importantly, they did not resort to falling down and screaming foul at the slightest injury. Each time they fell, they picked themselves up and went on like, yes, this is a game, let’s continue. They played as a team. They were not proud, not rude to their opponents. They played football like it was football, not like they needed to prove to the world anything.

We spent the last 2 weeks in Paris adjusting back to a lifestyle of” being”, not “doing”. And I guess one of the key things about “being” is understanding that it’s not about the goals we set (pun un-intended) or the things we do. It’s us. It is not what we score in life that marks us. It is how we play.

Jo