There is not much that I hate. I have become used to saying that I, ...Do not follow sports, rather than saying that I do not care for them, or that I do in fact hate them. But I find them morally disagreeable and have never understood why. They seem as much a thing to follow and love as war itself. I used to love playing, you know like neighborhood kid stuff. I still love the physical and psychological benefits of activity, but this is far from sports. Why, then, did I come to HATE the thing known as professional sports? I came closer to understanding why this was in me when I realized that it was competition that I hated. In the workplace, in the dating scene, in politics, religion, art, literature -- anything and everything good and humanly rewarding in life is sullied and tainted by competition. I just resigned myself to the fact that it was one of those just so things in life, though. Deal with it: it will always be there. Notwithstanding the acceptance, it was as distasteful to me that people wear #1 This and Champions That T-Shirts as someone wearing a highly offensive We Nuked Japan! shirt. And yet someone winning the Super Bowl and thousands of people dead are nowhere in the same league. I just figured I had a baseless prejudice and some fundamental problem. But then, a bit of ancient wisdom: Victory breeds hatred, for the conquered is unhappy. He who has given up both victory and defeat, he, the contented, is happy. Victory is hatred. That is what I hated: not the competition, but the resultant hatred. There is nothing about sports that represents contentedness. Of all of the benefits that one may list, contentment is never applicable. Records are never content: they must be broken. Winning streaks are never content: they must have more. This is beyond competition: it is contempt and hatred. This is not my attempt to say that a sports fan is wrong, hateful, spiteful, or an inhuman monster. It is simply that I would rather be content and for me personally, I can see no contentedness in it whatsoever. I would rather burn a gazillion calories hiking to a mountaintop to meditate than burn the same amount of calories tackling quarterbacks and making touchdowns. The Buddha and I would have spent a lot of time on the pine bench together.
Posted on: Wed, 02 Apr 2014 00:09:11 +0000
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