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The Love Language of Sports

February 7, 2015 Published by: Frank

THE LOVE LANGUAGE OF SPORTS – by Frank David Heslop

As you know, this month’s theme is love, because of Valentine’s Day. So what I want to write about is love, but not the love that you are thinking about right now. Not the romantic kind of love between a boy and a girl, but rather the kind of love that I experience playing the beautiful game. Now if you have been reading my previous essays you might have read the essay, “For the Love of the Game”. Today’s essay is a little different.

I remember watching a soccer game before the world cup that took place last year in Brazil and the guy commentating on the game said something like this, “There is something spiritual about soccer in Brazil” and I kind of knew exactly what he meant because I had been to Brazil before and experienced it myself.

I don’t know about you but sometimes I love to make other people smile and that is exactly what I saw in abundance during my trip to Brazil. I saw how the game put a smile on the face of the people of Brazil. How all kinds of kids came together, young and old and just played with such abundant joy. I saw how their faces lit up when they saw a ball, it was just amazing to experience that in real life.

I loved how all the different diversities of people came together because of the game. I loved how they made a plan to play the game in unlikely places, they played in the smallest of spaces and with whatever they could find, whether it was a can or a cramped up piece of paper, it did not even have to be the right shape.

I loved the “connect factor” that the game had, the same way that love brings people together. You did not have to be the right age, height, sex or race. You did not even need to be good at this game. We were in a foreign country but we could speak the only language we needed to speak in order for us to be part of the Brazilian culture, and that was the language spoken with our feet and any circular object we could find.

I am now on the lookout in my own beautiful country for the same opportunities. I want to bring people together and I want to see the love and interactions that football brings in this country.

I believe that sport in general is a privilege and that God created it specifically for these reasons. I believe it’s an honour to be playing sports and to be given the opportunity to make it a profession.

Image courtesy of Naypong at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Opportunities

January 25, 2015 Published by: Frank

Opportunities – By Frank Heslop

This year I believe is the year of opportunity. My whole family believes that big things are going to happen this year, so I believe its going to be the year of opportunity. Its not a new year’s resolution. I believe one of the things that is going to stand out for me this year, will be all the opportunities that will come my way.

Now because of this belief I realised that there are a few values or principles I will have to live by to make this year successful. I will give two:

Firstly, “you have an opportunity of a lifetime but you have to take advantage of it in the lifetime of the opportunity”. (E.T.)

This came to me obviously by Eric Thomas but I only fully understood it when I went for trials at a soccer team called SuperSport United Academy where I didn’t get chosen. I looked back at my trial experience, and thought of all the opportunities I was presented with. I realised that life and the game of soccer have something big in common in that they are both all about opportunities and these opportunities unfortunately have a lifespan. Every time you get the ball its an opportunity. While you are running its an opportunity. Before you shoot there’s an opportunity. The person that succeeds is the one that takes his opportunities while it is still alive, not the most talented one or the most hard working one. So I realised that every opportunity I get I have to take if I want to be successful.

Secondly, “Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead”. (James 2:17) “Knowing is not enough, we have to apply. Being willing is not enough we must do”. (Bruce Lee)

This is very hard. It is so easy to talk, but “doing” is another story. There are some big goals that I want achieve this year so I have a plan. I don’t know if it will work or not, but what I know is that to follow that plan is going to be really difficult. So I don’t know if you’ve realised, but most of us get super excited talking about the plan and how its going to elevate us towards achieving our goals and dreams. Then day one starts and I can tell you now, you will struggle to wake up with the same excitement that you had when you were talking about it. So this year needs to be all about actions and much less talk, because this is how opportunities will turn into stepping stones for greater things to come.

Opportunity

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For The Love Of The Game

January 11, 2015 Published by: Frank

For The Love Of The Game by Frank David Heslop

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I thought quite hard on how I should start off and what I should write about in my first essay and then it hit me. I thought let me start with how I started off in sport.

I remember as a child why I used to play the beautiful game. It was never about achieving anything great in the beginning, yet I trained so damn hard as if I was trying to achieve something though. On the journey of becoming a sportsman (high school years), I started on a high note but then I suddenly reached a tough patch. I have had some tough fighting, situations that I could not see myself overcoming. The thought of giving up would sometimes find its way into my thoughts, but I always had great people in my life to keep me going.

I would fall down and pick myself up again and again, with the help of my great family. Yet one thing I did not learn was to overcome the disappointment and anger of falling. Falling is the best way to learn and develop. However one needs to learn to fall without hurting oneself so badly that it takes too long to recover. This was the biggest problem with me at the time: that when I fell it would take something valuable away from me and I would either not recover properly or take too long to recover.

So to get back to the point of why I used to play the beautiful game as a child. It was because I loved playing it. I had no one telling me that I should give up because I am not good enough and even if I did I would not even care because I was playing the game for the right reason, because I loved it. I did not care about the coach’s or anyone’s opinion, I just wanted to play because it brought me joy. I could spend hours outside or in the yard kicking the ball around because of the love I had for the game.

Now whenever you in a tough patch in your sports career, remember why you started playing the sport in the first place and try to play it exactly the same way that you did as a child, with joy and happiness. Then when you fall, you will fall with joy and even though you might get hurt falling you will always be able to get back up. Picture a baby trying to transition from crawling to walking, they will fall a thousand times, sometimes they laugh and sometimes they cry but they will always fall just hard enough to pick themselves back up again.

My final words are the most important of all from 1 John 4:7-8. It says; “Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love”. At the end of this scripture it says that “God is love” meaning that if you play with love and for love, you are playing with God and for God because He is love and He has created love. So that feeling you get whenever you feel as if you enjoying the sport or game so much that you say you love it, that is God right by you guiding you because you are playing with Him by your side.