What humans really seek, illustrated through our passion for sports
As humans, we play sports, because we strive for victory.
Cynics will say that this is due to our need to pummel our opponents into the dirt and kick them while they’re down out of some innately dark lust to feel superior, while others might say it’s because of the joy of succeeding in your passion, bonding with your teammates and seeing hard work paying off.
Regardless of which side you sit on, it’s clear that we desire victory. Obviously this can be a more abstract thing than winning a game because victory can apply to many contexts.
But regardless, we are constantly trying to reach that sense of accomplishment. And the examination of the psychology and mentality that takes place as people try to get there, is a microcosm of the human condition.
A fatality in life is that whether in sport or otherwise, sooner or later everyone experiences a block, a “mental block” that they must truly obsess over or devote time to to get past in order to reach their goal.
Evolution and progression, not just in sport, but in general, is messy. A significant shift must happen for things to improve at a drastic enough level, and this leaves plenty of room for error. Innovation is plagued by mistakes, so in seeking to genuinely improve, things will get better before they get worse.
Sport is unbridled joy in motion, a pure display of the human spirit.
There’s nothing more intimate than someone doing what they love. It’s idealized when we speak about it, but in experiencing sports, whether playing or watching, the highs are indescribable. There are two aspects of these highs that make them entirely worth it. Firstly, that they’re incredibly difficult to achieve, and secondly, that they’re fleeting.
Everyone is selfish to some extent, even in team sports. In most cases you’d desire what’s best for the team, but we want want we want at the deepest level, and sometimes things conflict. In team sports, you want to be on the field, pitch or court and you want to perform your best, it’s a competition not just against opponents, but with team mates as well. Yet in a healthy scenario, the team’s needs always come first. It’s a dynamic that creates relationships that are part sibling and part rival, pushing each other and achieving personal goals to achieve team goals in an ideal world. And striking a balance and compromise between these two concepts is what makes sport fulfilling, because it can lead to these… moments.
It’s a mix of personal fulfilment and playing for your teammates, and when those two aspects of sport coincide, it’s a truly beautiful thing, displaying your bonds with your brothers or sisters through living out your passion.
Or in an individual sport, finding that one play or game where all of your hard work and struggles pay off and where you realize that your trials were worth it, that what you are doing is truly all you want to be doing in that moment.
Often, but not always coinciding with victory — It’s mesmerizing, it’s ecstasy! These are the moments that we live for. When the stars seem to align and everything coincides and coalesces into this one single moment that seems to freeze time, during which you could not feel any happier or any more in tune with life… and then, as quickly as it comes, the moment is gone.
For anyone who has a true passion for a sport or something similar, these tiny points are the greatest possible high. We’re hedonistic, primitive beings, so this is not surprising that we constantly seek this gratification.
You can’t capture these moments in a bottle, so as soon as they pass, you devote your time to reaching that point again, to experience that ecstasy once more. To reach that peak, to see beyond that wall, to open that door.
When you put your everything into a passion and fail, the pain of it can be unimaginable. So, naturally, the opposite is true.
Tasting victory, experiencing defeat, and the trials, the suffering, the peaks and valleys that we go through as we try to taste it once more, the pure joy that we experience when playing, the passion that exudes from us as everything comes together, and the suffering in between that makes it all the more worth it, I think that above all, THAT is the appeal of sports.
Just RAW & UNBRIDLED dedication and passion. A constant internal and external battle, within and outside of oneself, to reach that one moment, the one that you will look back on fondly for the rest of your life. And then when it passes, you resolve to reach it again… and again… AND AGAIN!
Such is the nature of not just sport, but what most of us look for in life.
And as always, many thanks for reading.
