Sports: An Emotional Investment

Have you ever noticed the most emotional state of being? It’s life. I’m not sure why we pretend otherwise.

I was asking my husband out loud the other day, what is everyone so busy with? What is everyone so distracted by? What are we waiting/hoping for?

Football season has started once again. I love sports! I love the competition, but I don’t watch them. I mean, I try not too. I can’t support that professional sports players each get paid millions of dollars to do something that uliatmely benefits no one. All the while, people who make less then 10th of what the sports players make, pay for everything that sports players get. Millions and millions of dollars are collected from faithful fans and are funneled into these Demi-gods. …and for what?  I love sports, but I can’t watch sports.

However, I won’t fail to recognize that within our society there is nowhere more appropreciate to be dramatic, zealous, and emotional than when you’re in the zone of watching sports.   Why is this? How is it that sports are the greatest reality which are worthy of our greatest treasures: time, attention, and emotions …let alone the lesser but still necessary treasures of money and dreams.

What faithful sports watcher doesn’t have a little jar some where filled with coins for the day their favorite team goes the champaionship game?

I knew this guy who was simply known as “the bread guy” and he worked from the crack of dawn until sometime in the evening for a reasonable living. This man was an avid fan of the Cleveland Browns. He had tattoos, season tickets, and his every shirt was the Browns, his coats and jackets where also the Browns. He knew their schedule, their players, their history, their statistics, and things I’m sure I don’t even know there is to know about these sports players and their games. This man was dedicated, invested, and emersed into the reality of the Cleveland Browns.

But from a distance… the reality is the Cleveland Browns are not a reality. They are only some people who play a game in order to gain money. The simplistic view of these things expose a certain amount of foolishness. ….again, let me say, I love sports… I just can’t support them anymore. Why? Because I need a deeper reality. Something that makes a difference at the end of the day, the year, a lifetime. Sports games aren’t changing the world. Mother Treasa, Katie Davis/Majors, and Amy Carmicheal are changing the world. They are among those who invest their time, zeal, energy, emotion, attention, dreams, and money into the people around them. People who need to be loved. To me that seems like a greater reality. So why are so many people preoccupied by something like sports? What’s the pay off? What fulfillment is there in helping millionaires stay millionaires regardless of whether the do their task at hand or not?

Why do we embrace the truth of sports being a reasonable emotional investment, but the stories of people around us are just passing details in life? We do not cry with their disappointments and tragedies. We do not wince at their injuries. We do not cheer victoriously over their accomplishments, big or little. We’re too busy for our neighbor …our friend or kinsmen. But for strangers who entertain us for a few hours in a week, for them we lavish all things? Why? What kind of reality is that?

If we can’t embrace our own lives as being the most appropriate place for emotions to be applied, but instead must filter it through a secondary funnel, then do we live in reality at all? Are we disconnected for life and from reality? If we save our best parts for a sports game, or tv show, or political media-gossip (or other questionable investments),  then are we simply escaping reality, maturity, and the preserving hope of life itself?

What are we spending ourselves on? And why? How can this invement change the world around us? How can it help us to grow up into the people we’re meant to be? Are we investing our emotions into life, where they’re meant to be lived out? Or have we choosen to hide ourselves and our emotions in imaginary realities? We have too much to invest. We must not waste ourselves on every intoxicating hype that pass through the screen. We must be the people we are created to be; a people who feel, who touch, who are moved by the stories next to us, around us, coming towards us even now.

If we check out, turn the lights off, and zone out ..then we’re not really living life. But if we’re still here… It’s because we want to live and to be alive. Maybe it’s time to check our reality and engage life.

“Here I stand, I can do no other. God help me.” – Martain Luther