When you watch events such as championship games, or yearly competitions, and especially the Olympics, it's easy to idolize the athletes. It's probably the most obvious display of performing beyond natural limitations. These athletes inspire us with their great fortitude, heart, and unwillingness to accept anything less than their best. Images of people willing pressing forward, despite injury (mind or body), will make our hearts swell with pride simply for being a fellow human being.
Any competition has victors and losers. Fans go berserk when their team wins, but also when they lose. Athletes face this constantly, and anyone watching gets to see how they react. Seeing a heroic athlete accept defeat with grace, and win with equal grace, is inspiring. We all hopefully want to be better than we typically are. So, athletes easily become role models (despite the actual quality of the particular athlete). Those wise enough to understand this will do their utmost to display their best and shove down their worst.
Finally, for those of us who cannot possibly perform athletics on par with Olympians, we live vicariously through the athletes we watch. It's a concept called "projection." It's when you place your own self onto another (sometimes in a good way, others in a bad). With athletes, we want to be the ones performing the stunning backflips and incredible feats of human perfection. There's nothing wrong with it, as it's a key part imagination, and even helps us yearn to do better. Which is why sporting events are so amazingly popular -- I just can't imagine anyone watching two physicists battling out with math theorems of dimensional geometry ... but I can hope!
- M
No comments:
Post a Comment