Started this yesterday, but only finished it this evening and decided it was still worth posting :-) ... Hope it is...
I’ve felt moved today to write something in response to one of the major news stories currently filling our papers and TV screens. Whilst the Middle East tears itself up in revolution, we find ourselves oddly miss-focussed on two young sportsmen –Mr Cole and Rooney- and contemplating their recent behaviour.
For simple contextualisation purposes, Ashley Cole, the Chelsea and England defender is currently having to explain how and why he ended up shooting a young work experience kid with an air riffle, at the Chelsea FC training ground. Wayne Rooney, also an England international has been somehow cleared of a clear-as-day act of violence in Saturdays game with Sunderland (?) where he is shown to deliberately elbow an opponent without any obvious justifiable (if there could ever be) motive.
But I don’t want to talk so much about the actual incidents themselves, but more the bigger picture that surrounds it all. Whilst out on my long run today, I was thinking about these things and also the reasons why I myself, do what I do as a professional sportsperson. What's the reason… and I wonder what would be the answer Mr Cole and Rooney would give to this question.
The irony of these two news-hitting incidents is that for all the criticism and “outcry” that we see and hear from the papers and the public, come tonight when Chelsea play Manchester Utd (and both players are allowed to play) there will be nearly 80,000 fans cheering… dare I say it… worshiping these same two men regardless of their personal misdemeanours. Should it strike us as surprising therefore when people in their position do such things when the long term response they get is adoration and love. The perception of the reality of all they have is clearly lost… and it's easy for “us common folk” to sit back and point at them, criticising; yet are we any better? To what end do we do things, what's the reason and how morally superior do we stand up to them? It's easy for us to say “they don’t know what they have” and accuse them of being ungrateful and abusing their privileged lives, but are we so different ourselves?
In the pursuit of “idols” we can all too often I think, find ourselves doing things we try to justify or even choose to ignore and accept as “wrong”; and yet in the grand scheme of things how important are those things that we pursue, crave, follow… live for…worship? I know the word “worship” might seam alien to many, but when we ask ourselves do we sacrifice time, money, friends or family in order to get these things, or for these people? This ‘thing’ might be money, status or clothes; or these people might be spouses, celebrities or sports-people. Either way if the answer to those questions is ‘Yes’, then worship is maybe not so misappropriate a word to use.
Providentially the book I’m currently reading struck me with some quite hard hitting things on this very subject today. It's called “Don’t waste your life” (By John Piper) and here follows a short exert from it that brings some sobriety to some of the things in life that we all end up placing value on, yet find it all too easy to criticise others when they fall:
“At these moments, when the trifling fog of life clears and I see what I am really on earth to do, I groan over the petty pursuits that waste so many lives – and so much of mine… it is like a multi-layered dream world of insignificance expanding into nothingness…
[Contemplating the immense courage and sacrifice of World War II]… I cannot make peace with the petty preoccupations of most [modern] life. Reading [one] story I wanted to speak to every youth group in America and say ‘Do you want to see what cool is? ...Well listen up about Jack Lucas.
He’d fast talked his way into the Marines at fourteen… assigned to drive a truck in Hawaii, he had grown frustrated… stowed away on a transport out of Honolulu.
He landed on D-Day [at Iwo Jima] without a riffle. He had grabbed one lying on the beach and fought his way inland.
Now on D-Day+1, Jack and 3 comrades were crawling through a trench when eight Japanese sprang in front of them. Jack shot one of them through the head. Then his rifle jammed. As he struggled with it a grenade landed at his feet. He yelled a warning to the others and rammed the grenade into the soft ash. Immediately, another rolled in, Jack Lucas, seventeen, fell on both grenades. “Luke, you’re gona die,” he remembered thinking…
Aboard the hospital ship Samaritan the doctors could scarcely believe it. “Maybe he was too damned young and too damned tough to die,” one said. He endured twenty-one re-constructive operations and became the nations youngest Medal of Honour winner – and the only high school freshman to receive it.”
Now whilst that might not straight away seam like it has anything to do with football, or celerity status and lives… or you and me; I feel it actually has all too much to say to us all. As John Piper put it, can we ourselves make peace with the “petty preoccupations of most [modern] life”? How much time do we ourselves waste on things that serve no purpose, or that often actually have underlying damaging implications? Just because my mistakes aren’t so publicly shown and commented on, does this mean I should be any less prudent with the choices I make and the things I do? I would suggest not. Trust me, it's something that’s becoming more and more weighty in the choices I make and hope it will help me to ensure as many as possible are good and purposeful ones.
How easily we can read a gossip magazine and tear apart someone else’s lifestyle and ironically see no fault on our part for doing this. Or how readily do we pay extortionate sums to attain a possession we deeply crave or “need” without a moment of guilt for the selfish use of the money that could have so easily transformed the life of an earthquake victim, or Aids orphan.
This might seam like a pretty big and deep subject for my blog here… but this is what's been going through my head today as I’ve trained. It's certainly spurring me on to try and ensure I don’t waste my life and the gifts I’ve been given. I want to try and use what I do in sport to serve a greater purpose. I hope and pray that every decision and action I take towards this end won’t be wasted and that I too, won’t get caught up in petty preoccupations… or just as bad, pointing the finger at others who might – there might just be a big plank of wood in my eye while I’m criticising the spec in theirs.
While we may feel frustrated with the behaviour of such people as Ashley Cole and Wayne Rooney, paralysed to impact it all in any way, I am beginning to realise that actually we can change it all more than we realise. Though speaking directly to such as these two sportsmen is highly unlikely, we can make changes in our own lives that impact in positive ways beyond simply getting one or two famous people to live lives we would deem “good”. Even that notion of “good” is something to be more closely examined (another day maybe) but for now I think I will start by trying to ensure that each conscious decision I make has a purpose that is greater than my own. If we all try to do this, then I think the difference would be far more profound that one of two sportsmen toeing the line of quiet, peaceful living. Challenging for me… but it's a challenge that has purpose and surely therefore, is worthwhile.
