Almost a redemptive quote

On Sunday, as I was reading on the balcony I heard from a block near ours the kind of loud utterances usually heard when football buffs have just seen their favourite team score. I had no idea which sporting event was taking place because I am not interested in sport (or sports).

On Monday, I understood what it had been all about when I caught sight of the newspaper headlines: the people I had heard roughly half a day earlier were celebrating the victory of our local tennis star Stansilas Wawrinka at Roland Garros (French Open). Shortly before midnight, I felt that this little chauvinistic outburst by our local newspapers was too good an opportunity to miss given my rather unfavourable stance towards sport. So I left the comfort of my home to walk to the MRT station and take a shot of the newspaper headlines.

Back home, vaguely recalling that Mr Wawrinka had made the headlines a couple of years ago after it was claimed that he had left his wife and young daughter to pursue his tennis career, I looked up some biographical information on the Internet. Mr Wawrinka then became far more sympathetic to me when I found out about the tattoo he sports* on his left forearm, which reads: ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better’ – the quotation is from Samuel Beckett, an Irish playwright I truly admire.

This led me to realise why the ‘thrill of victory and the agony of defeat’ (to quote the famous expression of Jim McKay, an American sport presenter) holds such a powerful sway over us, ordinary folk gathered in front of the ‘electronic fireplace’ (the expression is Marshall McLuhan's, Mr ‘the medium is the message’). Sport heroes allow ordinary people like me to transcend vicariously the drudgery, the pettiness of the lives we lead.

So I saw the Beckett quotation almost as redemptive given that most people lead unfulfilling lives as they have to toil 40+ hours per week at work, often doing something they do not really like or, for some poor souls, something they simply loathe. In all honesty, how many of us can claim to be doing their dream job? Would you really remain in your job if you won, say, 10 million francs at the lottery? Please note that I do not buy lottery tickets, so I guess that this means that I am a happy soul. ;-)

As palliatives, we buy powerful cars, fancy clothes, the latest electronic gadgetry or we go on holidays to far-distant places (and ‘exotic’ ones at that). All this to try to fill the void in our lives which has been brought about by the very meaninglessness of leading such lives! ‘To have or to be’, to quote the title of an essay a very perceptive German-American (Erich Fromm) published roughly 40 years ago, sums it all, no?

As a result, the masses end up watching sports instead of taking part in sports (or in what would be better, physical activity), let alone taking part in more rewarding pursuits (seeing friends, enjoying nature, engaging in spiritual awakening or building activities, etc).

Sport in its present form merely exists to promote more consumption of products usually manufactured in Asia as well as to sustain the ‘animal spirits’ in us (i.e. competition between us), probably so as to provide some kind of justification for the fact that a small minority is becoming ever wealthier (this, of course, at the expense of the majority of us all).

Therefore, keep your sport role models, manufactured by the mass media and sustained by multi-billion corporations, if you so wish. For my part, I am not interested – not the least – as I grant sport no redemptive value whatsoever.

* The pun was intentional.

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Lausanne, 11th June 2015