It is hard to fully comprehend the impact of sport in our lives. We all know that sports are good and can help making the society a better place to live. Certainly sports or at least some sports are also pure businesses, industries under the follies of the worst forms of capitalism.
Nevertheless sport and here I used the singular to refer to the hodgepodge of different disciplines so diverse from each others, can bring magic, hope and sadness at the same time.
Within families or in larger groups you can literally have people together feeling opposite sensations at the same time: some of them are crazy in happiness and some others are mad in sadness. This is the effect of sport.
Indeed sport has a very strong emotional component, impossible to fully understand but undeniable.
If sports can alter so easily our feelings and emotions at the same time we should recognize sport as a tool or a platform for change.
By getting involved in a sport by playing in a local team or coaching a group of youths but also by rooting for your favorite team, you embrace a way of living.
Sport literally embraces you and you should simply let this be: you can gain a better physical and psychological well being but you can also become part of a community of fans, all united by a love for a discipline.
When all this happens, many refer to it as “sport for development” or “sport for peace” but for me sports is first and foremost all about change that can be developmental but most importantly is transformational.
Transformations after alls are huge changes, aren’t they? If we say sport for change, I feel we really give the due importance to what sports can do.
The word “change” is stronger than “development” or “peace”, it is more charged and this in the positive way.
Change, transformation: when we talk about sports, we imply a shift from a status to another, something arises within us. In its truly multidimensional nature, sport is a key element to bring something new in us.
If sport is good for the society, if a match of football or basketball can unite two communities, this is possible because there is first something positive happening at personal level.
Therefore it is paramount that in order to acknowledge the due role of sport in general in the society, we have first to recognize that sport is an agent of change at personal level. Sport works out at larger levels but the personal dimension comes first.
While we cheer our favorite teams in the Champions League or in the NBA, let’s think of our lives without sports: emptiness, a drop in positive emotions and feelings.
Instead let’s think the opposite scenario, a society where everybody and I really mean everybody here, feels part of something not only by watching the TV but also by practicing it or by following the neighborhood team.
By putting all yourself into it, you never experience sport passively, even if you simply watch them on TV.
Of course it would be nice to persuade those “armchair TV remote” sport persons to go in a more “live” mode or to persuade those who do not care about sports to watch the All Blacks dancing the haka, the ancestral war cry practiced by maori in New Zealand.
With sports, passions and emotions run high, people feel connected and this is simply, truly and madly good for the humanity.
Yet we are still far from fully let ourselves embrace what is in reality the easiest and funniest way to improve the persons we are.
A real pity for those who are missing it out.
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