Bhupinder Kumar
As we are born, in this world, there is one peculiar aspect of our human nature that arrives with us is that – our instinctive nature to play. The child learns to play with hair locks of the mother, play with the mother’s neckless, rattling toys, empty milk bottle and later on mobile games, chimes, doll, a ball, cars, and other team or individual games. As we grow in life, however, our innate desire to play is either progressed, or it is sadly inhibited or even crushed in many cases. To my mind there is only one difference between adults and children i.e .the price of their toys
Unknowingly this is the very moment when effortlessly we begin to feel and understand the role of rules in our life. In a very natural way we start experiencing the distinction between right and wrong, whether while rope jumping or playing a game of hide and seek. Will someone honestly keep your eyes closed while counting to ten while my friends hide? Will you hide away a card in a simple game of play cards , when no one is watching? How we respond to these questions as young individuals shapes our sense of morality and impartiality.
The most beautiful aspect of sport is that, morals and ethics are experienced through every moment of playing, as while pushing one’s physical and emotional margins. Sport offers theatrically constructed rules to adhere to. In a way, sport gives us the training ground for the game of Life, in which the same concept of fair play applies, in the absence of umpires, cameras, or whistles to keep us in check.
The term ‘Sport’ arises from the French adage, desporter or se desporter, meaning to amuse oneself. “It’s just a game,” we often say. But whether we are out on the field, with 20 cameras and millions watching, or we are out on a Sunday morning with only 3 friends on a Golf course, we each come face to face with the desire to compete, a word that is derived from the Latin root com petere, meaning to strive or seek together; a shared aspiration of excellence. Greeks, attached great significance to the relationship between sports and life. Plato exhorted that a good education must develop virtue in man.. It is also evident that through sports, one develops self-confidence and morality.Besides sportsmanship, sport ingrains values that go beyond the development of physical excellence: discipline, perseverance, hard work and acceptance.
Discipline is fostered through a regime of training, controlled diet, and perseverance. Not every match can be won always. Not every opponent can be defeated always. And therefore, perseverance; accepting failure as a part of life. Rather than discouragement, they can become opportunities that motivate constant improvement; training harder, practicing longer, repeated battling of inner challenges. Sportspersons, for example, often imply that the only real way to attain victory is to overcome fear of defeat. As Olympic gymnast Nadia Comaneci once said “I don’t run away from a challenge because I am afraid. Instead, I run toward it because the only way to escape fear is to trample it beneath your feet,” she said.Sport allows us to conquer ourselves through grit, perseverance and the cultivation of a pure heart. Plato says, “the mere athlete is too brutal and philistine, the mere intellectual unstable and spiritless. The right education must tune the strings of the body and mind to perfect spiritual harmony.” To me, the illustration of brilliance on the field is a reflection of the inner moral fiber that expresses the strength of one’s moral compass outwardly. Even as an audience, we celebrate the thirst, the skill and the determination of our cherished athletes. Perhaps we can use the reminder that sport demands our higher selves to test the very depths of our own characters, and the ethics we identify with. And that is when the power of sport is its finest: a magnificent school of life, which supports human beings, young and old, man or woman, on the path towards personal development, reaching out to the highest ideals of our human potential.
The Olympics have provided some unforgettable moments of outstanding sportsmanship and fraternity over the decades, illustrating the sheer power of the human spirit.Over the last decade, however, young aspirants have found themselves struggling to identify with, let alone admire, the virtues of sports and professional athletes…and for with good reason. Scandals from like ball tampering, match-fixing and downright cheating, to multiple champions pulling out all the stops to win at any cost, like Lance Armstrong’s doping shame, have brought to light hard questions about ethics in sports. Dr. Rober Voy, a medical officer who was on the US Olympic Committee surveyed a number of elite athletes who were asked if hypothetically, they would be hypothetically willing to take a special pill that would guarantee them an Olympic gold medal even if they knew this pill would kill them within a year. Over 50 percent of the athletes surveyed responded affirmatively. Today, with fame and the monetization of sports, even top athletes are sometimes motivated to win at all cost. This is perhaps why few good men, men like Rahul Dravid or and Adam Gilchrist are revered; athletes who have walked off the field when the ball snicked their bat, regardless of whether the umpire heard it or not, are revered amongst several bigger “stars”.
We perhaps tend to undervalue the synergy between sport and human growth. Motorsport legend Sir John Whitmore said that sport is a “microcosm of life” where we go through all the emotions of starting nowhere and getting somewhere, through highs and lows, with all of it compressed into each season, and each career. “And they are all things that you are going to go through in your whole life later. I think they’re just easier things to deal with later because you’ve experienced them before in a heightened manner,” he says. Crucially, he states that because sport is so “compressed” in terms of time, the sensations involved are so intense and amplified, that it forces us to grow internally at a more rapid pace to deal with challenges, grooming us for life ahead. It is interesting that the ancient Romans often conferred the title of ‘god’ on their champions for a single day. The critical point here is that it was for only a day. It is a formidable achievement, real and powerful. But with a focus solely on winning rather than imbibing eternal values, one can easily fall to vanity, forgetting that being a champion is delicate and fragile.
As the sports industry has matured, and with big money now involved in most sports around the world, however, we see a sharp fall of ethics, with cases of substance abuse, ‘doping’, and match fixing scandals surfacing. The motivation in sport has sadly fallen to personal victory, driven by monetary rewards and superficial fame making what once used to be a ceremonial celebration of the human spirit into just another materially driven business. Today in the age of multi-million dollar sponsorships, politics in sport, sport for money and for glory, perhaps its true value remains in its ability to foster harmony and the expression of the human spirit. Long after the music of the national anthems end after the presentation ceremony, what lingers is the sentiment of the best of the human potential; always Faster, Higher, and Stronger. Plato suggests that beyond the prize and glory, the true celebration of spirit is the motivation towards excellence that emerges from will (internal) rather than competition (external). Many tournaments traditionally end with the ceremonial handshake signifying the basic respect for opponents as competitors, fellow human beings, each sharing in the aspiration for perfection. And respectful admiration of this mutual aspiration is honored as more valuable than personal victory.
For this reason, many organizations today rely on sports based activities when conducting workshops to develop leadership and teamwork. Such exercises highlight the value of working together to extract the power of the collective. In order to do so, each team is led by a captain who possesses special skills and is therefore best suited to lead. And yet, in spite of stellar individual feats, only a collective team effort enables a win or loss. As part of this pyramidalic hierarchy, the captain gives the team motivation and direction, but each team member is an essential and integral participant. Each individual within the team has a specific role to play, each strives for excellence in this role, which affects the entire team’s performance. Today I need to ponder upon ourselves, am I team player? Or leading my life ethically?
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