My Introduction to Sport
Where do I start? My first introduction to sport was as a small child watching my mother play tennis. She was very competitive. I saw it in her reactions to a shot that put the ball into the net or when the ball landed outside the lines that defined the playing area. My mother also played field hockey and my father played rugby league. All my siblings played sport, as did many of my uncles, aunties and cousins on both sides of my family.
My grandfather played lawn bowls and, as my family shared the house of my mother’s parents, I would experience him coming home most Sundays always affected by alcohol, and sometimes with a gift for his performance on the greens or a tray of meat from the raffle.
At school we had swimming and athletic carnivals. I didn’t learn to swim until a little later, but I loved the athletics. It was a little different back then: as well as the running we had the three-legged race, where two people standing side by side would have their ankles tied together, meaning that they had one leg each free and the other two legs had to work in harmony with each other. We also had the sack race. We climbed into a potato sack and then had to jump our way to the finish line. Such fun! Even then I was very competitive and good at all the events in comparison to others. I was surrounded by sport.
At the age of seven I started playing rugby league. I had two years in the Under 8’s, winning the competition the second year with me scoring all the tries. The attention that I received from all these experiences when young reinforced my competitiveness and showed me that sport was the way to satisfy my need for recognition, allowing me to feel a little more comfortable with myself, albeit only temporarily.
The seeds that were planted watching my mother play tennis were now starting to shoot.
At 11 or 12 I started playing cricket. I tried tennis but was not as good as I was at the other sports so “I did not like tennis.” The cricket and football continued at school and for the relevant clubs, and of course every year there was a school athletics carnival. Swimming was another sport that “I did not like.” Success in the sporting area as a child and during my early teenage years gave me what I was looking for, being able to feel better about myself and have people like me. But that need was never fully satisfied.
Pushing to be ‘Better’ at Sport & Becoming a Brat
It was at the age of 11 that I started to learn that I could punish my body, which allowed me to be ‘better’ at sport. I needed to lose some weight to make the 5 stone 7 pounds (or 35kg) school representative football side, so every day I would run 3 miles or 4.8 km. I lost the weight. I liked doing that. My introduction to fitness was another distraction to continue my journey away from whom I truly was, progressively changing me from that tender, gentle and loving boy who came into this world six decades ago.
At school I was never top of the class as a student, the exception being in PE at high school. Otherwise, in classes of 30 plus students, I always finished in the middle, which started to feed a line of thought that I was ‘Mr Just Above Average.’ I knew that I was good at sport compared to my schoolmates, but not really good. Later on, this would feed into every part of my life.
Through my early teens nothing really changed. More success on the sporting field, my parents willingly paying for numerous trips all over the state of NSW. I was turning into a spoiled brat. I was always demanding more from my parents: I had perfectly good shoes but desperately needing the much more fashionable Nike or Adidas. I remember having a big dummy spit because they would not buy me those shoes. I always needed the best football or cricket equipment. I showed no appreciation for what I received; in fact, I expected nothing less. My parents got what they wanted but I was making them pay for it.
I started playing first grade cricket at the age of 16 and mixing with older men was a whole new experience. I had to become tougher than I already was, both physically and mentally. I was fortunate enough, again, to be successful and allowed myself to continue feeling good about myself.
Three years later I was playing first grade rugby league in a high-quality competition. Physically and mentally this demanded more of me. I had to train harder and there was more competition for a spot in the top team. This did not go well with my nervousness and anxiety. On game day I was not a nice person to be around. I would spend most of the morning in a room listening to AC/DC and other rock bands of the time. The purpose? To rev me up, make me feel more aggressive which I needed to be. Aggression was not natural to me so I had to call that energy in to survive in the coliseum, something I needed to do to feel better about myself and have people like me. The truth is they liked me for what I did more than who I was.
Travelling to the game I would be feeling nauseous from the nerves and in the minutes just prior to the game, dry retching or vomiting. This was all a part of my preparation. In fact, if I did not start dry retching I would start to question my preparation for the game – self-doubt big time. I had been successful in reaching this level with only a couple of levels to go: every child who plays sport has the dream of representing their country. I was no different.
Selling out at the Expense of Tenderness
A select few reach that level and they do that because they are willing to sacrifice what tenderness remains from whom they were as very young children. Yes, there is the physical aspect and talent side to it, but some are more willing to sell themselves in exchange for further developing those talents and physical requirements.
I knew by this time that, as mentioned above, I was just better than average. I would never reach the top because I never thought that I would. In saying that, I never played that way – I always pushed myself to my physical limits, whether at training or in a game. I still believed that punishing myself physically was a way of getting the results that allowed me to feel good about myself. People would like me for what I did, for what I was able to achieve.
You might have picked up a thread through this article that I did not like myself very much – and you would be right. I was a very nervous and anxious man, and this carried through to how I played sport. I was not a risk taker. I was very conservative in how I played, not wanting to make a mistake. This was always going to cap what I would achieve. There is an old saying – play to win. I can look back now and say that in most cases I played to not lose. This was my everyday life being played out in a sporting context… or was it the other way around?
Playing sport comes with the potential for injuries, and I have had my fair share, although I always regarded myself as doing pretty well as far as injury was concerned. I can look back now and recall the torn ligaments or tendons in the ankle and knees, the torn hamstring, groin or displaced hip, broken bones in my back, broken or dislocated thumbs or fingers, dislocated collar bones, head concussions or the many stitches inserted into my head and face to close up lacerations. If I was doing okay, how were the others doing?
Our willingness to play with injuries and put up with the pain is a measure of one’s toughness. Men, and now women, are identified by their ability to ignore what their bodies are telling them and sometimes play with serious injuries. Did you know that women play all of the football codes these days, including rugby league and rugby union, two very tough contact sports? Is this really the equality that women are seeking?
Sport, Competition & Drinking
Sport is about winners and losers. For every winner that gets to celebrate, there are many who suffer the hurts of being not good enough, beating themselves up because they should have done this or not done something else. Even those that win need more – an athlete that wins but wanted a faster time, for example.
Why would we willingly and deliberately do this to ourselves and other human beings who are no different from us? Sport is competition, no different from two countries fighting over land, water or commodities that lie beneath that land. In that sporting competition I hated the people I was playing against. They were my enemy. They were the ones trying to stop me from being recognised. It was war, but with who? Who was my real enemy?
To complicate things even further I started drinking at the age of 17 and the sports that I chose to play had very ingrained cultures around drinking alcohol. I was playing with much older, more experienced men, and not just on the sporting field. We pushed ourselves to the limit physically and then rewarded ourselves by going to the pub or club for a schooner or ten. I usually lost count before that stage. Drinking a schooner was the standard glass size – I think from memory 15 fluid ounces, while a middy, the next size down and being 10 fluid ounces, was generally for those who weren’t real men. I was not all that good at drinking.
There was always competition in the drinking. Some men claimed their authority by drinking faster than others or by how many beers they could drink. You had to try and keep up – you were defending yourself as a man. Some claimed a short-lived notoriety by sculling (drinking the whole glass in one go) their schooner of beer, or what was called a half-yard glass.
The drinking is designed to further entrap us, and in my case, it allowed me to escape any responsibility, any issues or problems that I may have had. They were always still there the next day, trapped in a cycle of train, drink, play, drink. The culture around alcohol in sporting clubs at that time was poisonous. I am quite fortunate to still be here in this life having narrowly avoided a serious car accident on more than one occasion when driving after drinking. I was still living at home with my parents. It must have been horrible for them knowing that I was out drinking and then driving home.
This pattern of behaviour remained the same whatever the sport. A new sport came along for me, touch football, not as demanding on the body as rugby league, but had all the same trimmings as the others. I could feel better about myself because I was good at playing the game, then drink to forget the fact that the real me was hiding behind this magical show. Everything was short-lived and just a temporary fix for the problem that I had. It was never going to provide me the opportunity that I was searching for: to return to the qualities that I had when I was born and to leave behind all the ideals and beliefs that had been imposed upon me by the world and reinforced by sport.
Life without Competition
My very competitive mother is in her 80s and stills hits a small, mostly white ball around a golf course. She is very hard on herself if she plays a bad shot and still loves to get a lower score than others. On a recent visit to see them we had a discussion about the changes that I have made to how I live, and sport came up – naturally, as that was how my parents identified with me, as a sportsman. Sport is still a big part of their lives. They will spend hours watching golf, tennis, rugby league, cricket. Dad loves the trots on the T.V.
I was able to explain to them what I now know was my real purpose for playing sport – to receive recognition and be liked by people. I was looking for other people to make me feel better about myself, to hide the pain that I felt from withdrawing from the qualities that came with me when I was born. My mother’s response pointed out to me something that I already knew all those years ago but conveniently ignored, and that is that people already liked me – my real problem was not liking myself. My father sat quietly to one side, understanding the conversation but not ready to accept that sport is used as a tool to pull us further away from our Soul and God.
This was no different from myself when I came across the teachings of the Ageless Wisdom presented by Serge Benhayon. For several months I stoutly defended sport and competition and today, six years later, my ears will still prick up when the word ‘sport’ is used. Competition? Did I mention that competition is also present in our relationships at home as well as at work? For some, it dominates their life. I know it still exists in me, albeit at very low levels and it affects my relationships with myself and other people.
Sport – competition. Life – competition. Perhaps there is a way of living that has no competition…
What if we could live a life where everyone was equal, where we would need nothing from others because it was already within us. What would our world look like if this was the case?
By Anonymous
Further Reading:
My Turnaround from Competitive Running to Connection with Me
The Body and My Relationship with it
My Reflection on Competition and Sport
341 Comments
When we punish our own body it is easier to punish and bully others.
This is true, Christoph. And straight to the point. It is only when we disregard, abuse, dismiss or judge ourselves that we can do the same to others… so it makes things very simple. Our responsibility is to build a respectful, caring, honest and one day loving relationship with ourselves so that we can take these qualities into every aspect of our lives.
These days even driving past a venue where sports are played one can feel the feelings that come with being competitive, as they can be easily felt. When young and playing these sports one thought that this feeling was normal but now it is simple to feel the hooking ill energy that comes from being competitive.
It feels awful for men to have to play sport to fit in when every cell of their bodies is crying out not to do this, but they override this feeling. Boys who get crushed in this way become crushed men who forget all the tenderness they really are.
‘I can look back now and recall the torn ligaments or tendons in the ankle and knees, the torn hamstring, groin or displaced hip, broken bones in my back, broken or dislocated thumbs or fingers, dislocated collar bones, head concussions or the many stitches inserted into my head and face to close up lacerations.’ Gosh! This sounds severe and we champion elite sport as a good thing?
There is the championing of those who get up and carry on despite of the injuries(!). Yet I wonder if at the beginning someone read this list to us without the other pressures that push you into such activities, would so many of us jump to get involved? I know I certainly would not.
Looking back I can say honestly that by far the biggest tension and source of anxiety I used to feel when participating in elite competitive sport was not the pressure from the crowd or team-mates or from my opponents but it was the tension of forcing myself to be competitive when there is not a single cell of me that is naturally that way.
There are many pressures and tensions which we can often accurately point out as impacting our experience of life, but I wonder how much of our stress and anxiety is in fact far more deep rooted as exposed by this comment.
I can completely relate here to the theme of having to change, distort and contort yourself not only physically but in every way as a person in order to achieve success in a competitive arena such as competitive sport. If it changes us to the point where it effects our relationships with others and with ourselves for the worse then is this a price worth paying for some temporary fleeting success and accolades?
Incredible how we smash through life to be the champion this and that without anyone ever mentioning that quality is what actually counts.
We get so much feedback from being good at sport – I remember the fitting in and camaraderie in particular as well as the pleasure in winning. But that is also a pleasure in beating someone else (and feeling like my world had ended if I lost to someone else), and having my team as a safety net, rather than realising I was quite awkward around others and quite shy, because I did not have any self confidence back then. Basically I used it as a sticking plaster to make me feel better and cope with the social pressures I felt so acutely at school.
‘There is a way of living that has no competition’ – I know this to be true and this fact blows the common misleading myth that competition is natural when in fact it is the opposite.
Competition is natural when there is no love. When there is love, competition is much less than love and I have not seen any point in engaging in competition.
The other day, two friends waved at me as I was driving in. They both looked so tender and sensitive, it made my heart melt. These two friends were men in their 30’s. Men who have let go of the sport competition thing and are willing to open up their hearts and be truly loving with those around them. In a world where it is all about being the toughest, strongest and hardest, it is truly touching to see the realness of what is natural to the masculine gender.
It’s no coincidence that some very sensitive people have chosen the most disregarding sport to harden up and feel protected and less affected by the world.
We do go into all kinds of activities in life to get recognition and rewards all because we do not appreciate ourselves for who we are when we are in comparison with people around us.
At times when I am asked what sport I do and tell them I don’t do any, they find me a little weird as it is so common to do a sport possibly because it is being promoted as healthy and something that should be part of your activities in life.
It is ironic that often such ‘healthy’ activities go hand in hand with injuries, aches & pains. Pushing my body past its limits and competing to win at the expense of others who become the losers is not a pleasant experience in my books, so not my choice of activity either.
Interesting you mentioned “to survive in the Coliseum” which gives me the impression that sport is still about life and death. Although not physically I can feel that energetically it is still the same as in the old days in Rome where these on life and death fights were common.
I have always felt the energy of sport to be an unpleasant one and so much else besides that is associated with it. It took many years however to appreciate my own discernment in the matter.
Although we can sometimes say that when we are very young there is not the same type of competition as in elite sport, which is true, this is the seed where it starts, and it is all from the same place. No competition is healthy or innocent.
I’m not sure Michael – I’d say same same but different level of intensity. Like you say definitely where the seed is sown.
‘It was at the age of 11 that I started to learn that I could punish my body, which allowed me to be ‘better’ at sport…’ Where are we at as a society when we punish our body to be better at anything to get ahead of others? Is this true success?
The reality of sport with its competition with one another is so huge to truly see what is going on and the effects it has on us and society as a whole is something to look at as shown here for its changes who we are and the love and oneness to a life of separation and striving that will never be enough.
I never really enjoyed sport as I hated the competitiveness of it, and I was not particualrly ‘good’ at any sport. I just enjoyed certain acitivites for what they were. But becoming aware of the competitive nature of people as I got older only encouraged me to shrink away from anyone who behaved in that way. However it is surprising how competition can sneak into our lives in much more insidious ways without us really noticing, and this can be just as harming as the more obvious examples such as sports.
It’s interesting what we call success in terms of achievements and gaining recognition but what if success is really about living true to who we are in essence, to bringing out our innate qualities in life that support and help raise us all up…
What would the world look like if there was no competition? Many assume competition is needed, since for example in a capitalist economy it is assumed that competition driving force for creative innovation, and that may be true in a society where survival of the fittest rules and is deemed to be a natural thing.
Yet I have seen in the example set by Universal Medicine, and many businesses set up by those inspired by its reflection, evidence of how it could be a different way. The desire to truly love, care and support humanity in itself promotes creative innovation that has people at the heart far more than when such endeavours come as a result of wanting to compete.
When we push our body to those limits, we can’t but disconnect ourselves from feeling it and when sensitivity is lost, we are at the mercy of any force we choose to continue escaping from feeling. Sport is clearly one of those activities in which we can find that kind of fuel, when is practiced in such way. The question would be, why not feeling? What are we escaping from? Which is the compensation we are looking for in return?
Sports is a safe hiding place for us to be comfortable and not push any boundaries. It is a way for us to put on a face like we are doing great when in fact competition is not in our bodies one bit.
This is such an important myth to overturn – I have heard it all my life that competition is innate and natural and it so isn’t… it is in fact absolutely against our true nature of working together and supporting each other to grow and learn.
Sport is thought to keep young people on track, keep them occupied, being healthy doing physical activity outside rather than sitting playing computer games. If they are really keen, they may been more inclined to take more care what they eat or drink, no small wonder it appears great to parents, especially when that was their back ground too. The lure of winning and beating others binds them with the one same goal. This description of coming out of that pattern to connect to the true tenderness inside every man and life without sport is pretty spectacular, it’s as strong as a drug addict stopping drugs.
During the time I played sport I encountered few injuries however the list here is not uncommon and indeed the attitude to them is one of frustration that they occur such is our drive to keep on playing. This would not be possible if we allowed ourselves to feel the tenderness in our bodies and all they communicate to us, but then that in itself is half the reason we seek to bludgeon them, less we feel the truth of what we know.
How would the world look like, if we would not measure ourselves on skills and talents but how amazing our individual qualities are, that make up together the whole picture? We would support each other in raising our vibration constantly instead of competing in functionality, which only can crush your vibration and quality.
How much do we deny our own grandness, when we have to be better than another?
I am very up for a competition-free world. Like enough of the ‘character building’, ‘it’s natural’ rhetoric… it is totally in conflict with our natural way of being and causes more division and unrest than we can possibly imagine.
Gentle exercise while you are aware of your body, honouring of it and choosing each movement with care is great for the body. What each gains from taking part in activities that include others and as one, in support of one another, you work towards something that is for and enhances the whole is invaluable. Competition sports at best mimic these, but in reality they tend to take us miles away from the true essence of these and make such an expression normal.
When we miss love in our life we look for a substitute. Sport works quite well – team sports give us connections to people, solitary sports allow for an almost infinite amount of effort. It is not love but it passes the time.
Sport will never be healthy, when you do it and disconnect to your body. True sport does honour your body and its delicateness and don’t put it under extreme tension, shock, pain and strain. Our body is there for us to access a higher intelligence by its movement and not to function for our own desires and pleasures.
When you look at competition in a general sense: you might geht a number or achieve a certain level and get either celebrated or not being recognised at all. How sad, that actually every system has this kind of hierachy and measurement. We are more “numbers” and functional roboters than the soulful, precious being that we are. What an exhausting way of being always needing to achieve something, instead of being and supporting each other in everyones quality.
What do we actually truly fear, when we always want to be the best?
I recently saw a post being shared on social media relating to running injuries which reads ‘Why isn’t the answer to a running injury ever “Just keep running a lot, it will go away.”‘ This highlights the mentality of those heavily involved in running but also in sport that even though they recognise that their chosen sport has caused an injury, they do not consider whether it is a wise choice to pursue in the manner they have been, but would prefer to carry on regardless.
That cure to keep running through the pain till it goes away, makes as much sense as hitting yourself with a hammer because it feels good when you stop! Why do we willfully push our body’s past the pain messages it sends us? Has there ever been a small child that has touched a hot stove twice?
It is a joy watching you children play and the tenderness with which they move and respond to one another. So how come we don’t foster this further and as described in this blog we introduce competition and pushing to get recognition and even teaching what leads to “I started to learn that I could punish my body, which allowed me to be ‘better’ at sport”. It is not so surprising that in later years so many people are constantly abusing their bodies as a norm, with the dire consequences we face as a society.
Sport will never take us to the real me.
When I used to play on my sports teams at school, I was always feeling lesser or moved to relief in the recognition of having won a match. This was really short change for the lack of love I felt in my life as it was only ever momentary.
We do know, even when fully immersed in it, that sport does not feel great and therefore the reason why drinking after the match, game or event is almost synonymous with it.
We think we can ‘game’ life to get what we want but what we don’t realise is like the figures in this photo we’re just being controlled by something much bigger – that lets us think we are a free player.
I was into horse riding. My dad thought it kept me away from boys and so begin the massive expense of horses and all the bits that go with them – which was filling a need in both of us and a total arrangement.
Competition creates a tension in the body that we consider to be normal. It’s only until we have something still and full to compare it with that makes this tension feel awful.
Rachel great point, when what we have is normal even though there is great illness, uncomfortableness then its only when there is something that is different and true do we realise and feel the extent of what is not true but we thought was true.
Very true. In fact we seek that tension as the price seems small compared to the distraction from how we feel it offers.
Hmmm. I like this because it makes me wonder how many other things we normalise that only in their absence do we realise how abnormal they are.
If we do not have the experience of the alternative, stillness, we feel something is ‘wrong’ if we do not have the tension. It is therefore an addiction, an addiction to adrenalin, one of the most addictive addictions there is.
How true Jonathan, when I went to the gym, there were people there who used to get really upset if they didn’t exercise hard. It appeared to relive their stress in life, but it’s more than that, it does feel an addiction.
Even spectating creates an awful tension in the body. A tension that not only felt normal to me when I used to watch my son play football but one that I used to say that I enjoyed. Now however I can’t bear the feeling of agitation in my body, the increased heart rate, sweaty palms and the inability to breath properly. It seems odd to me now that I used to enjoy feeling like that and even felt slightly cheated if the game didn’t provide me with the ‘buzz’ I was hoping for.