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
