Author: Manuel Narvaez
For parents, who, in a way, the truth eludes them when it is about the social and sports well-being of their child, and may not know how to provide proper support.
It is very bewildering to see how players are exposed to the sport of Russian roulette. We use sport for a better future, we have high goals that are to be admired, and we submit to rigorous and sometimes extreme training, for the dream of succeeding.
Some of us in this game get it right, and we are rescued; others, when the sport ends, risk their lives to chance.
We live in a society where values are almost non-existent and morality is declining, where our interests and ambitions are a priority.
In that roulette, we focus on the end result, and we lose the cause for which we participate in the sport. The stages in our cognitive, academic, social, and physical formation are ignored because we are not taught correctly, so it is challenging for educators to correct those corrosive nuances injected by our social environment through the years.
The cause: what we must promote in sports are learning and those experiences that enrich our lives and refine our character, self-determination, discipline, collaboration, and health, of course. Psychological, academic, social, and physical education is paramount. Winning must be secondary and vague.
But we find ourselves influenced by fashion, the media, musical and, artistic messages, television parodies, and comedy radio programs, which sell us a supposed reality, happiness, and fun, but successfully promote their cause creatively and appealingly: ignorance with malice and chronic pride.
We see fields/gymnasiums full of competition. Still, we see fans, parents, and other stakeholders promoting their actions and attitudes and unrealistic performance expectations, which they do not apply to themselves.
In this Sports-Russian Roulette, observers, young athletes, and students, only learn that their value as an athlete and person depends on victories, publicity, 'likes,' and 'shares.' They are forced to see that their mistakes are personal and that their dignity is at stake if they “fail.”
Thus, athletes who did not receive scholarships at universities were not selected to a team or were not signed to a professional team, experience disappointment, either due to their mistakes or injustice, which they have as an escape from the underworld, where they create a false expectation of acceptance, freedom, and attraction. You can see that in those songs dedicated to girls under 18, making the youths look like superhero pimps.
I published a book in 2011 entitled 'The Meaning of Basketball in Life' for that reason, and it contains various topics of everyday affairs using basketball as a metaphor. They invited me to basketball clinics, and I delivered speeches; then, parents approached me about how to make their youth belong to a team or be an athlete so that he/she does not go to the streets, do drugs, or segregate themselves from reality and build their own in many unhealthy sedentary games.
But our culture does not encourage productive reading, on topics that confront us, make us feel uncomfortable, and make us sweat. Because when in sports, there is a high demand for effort, energy, and oxygen, and muscle hypertrophy in training, the body creates new muscle memory functions that help in the new execution learned, causing growth, volume, capacity, transformation, and synaptic connections. In the same way, our neuromechanics and biomechanics operate in the application of effort to daily affairs.
We justify that we don't like to read, that we are visual. But who is not visual? Because I know people with vision problems, they are great visionaries and beings with big hearts and functional, and they are to be admired.
We deceive ourselves with a false pride that promotes ignorance, and being able to justify our actions by appealing to ignorance, looking for comparative or reference personalities to correct wrong behavior, and saying another did it for you not to feel alone in the mistake.
There is a collective fear of fathers, mothers, and relatives for their loved ones, the fear they can fall into the influences that today have a deceived and corrupted populations. People need genuine affection, but society uses it to sell fake love appealing to emotions.
It's incredible to go to a theater and see a standard or lifestyle in dialogue far below an acceptable or functional intellect, which does not carry messages of self-improvement, will, respect awareness, empathy, and understanding. They put a beautiful ending like the 'message,' but more was corrosive to detail and in suspense, and the beautiful, emotional 'message' only remains an illusion. This is how we act, by impulses, by emotion, by instinct, without conscience, by default, and by chance.
We have a lot of talent as a people, in sports, art, music, and television, but talent in the absence of an essential factor in this game of life, such as values, critical thinking, prudence, tolerance, meekness, emotional intelligence, has become a corrosive propellant that makes people lose perspective of what is vital, true and correct.
I write with a sense of urgency, because I keep seeing talented people, loved and valuable beings, being lost because the cause for which we participate, live, and remain in the sports, professional, and social fields has been distorted. But we are the best victims; we talk about those who "want to see us bad," which is the most famous line in music, and we put it in status on social media.
As a society, we live almost paranoid or a fan of conspiracy theories, that we see a stranger as an enemy or the one who made a mistake, as a terrorist.
We no longer embrace and invite diversity; if you don't unite with the system, you're against them. We're good at putting support status, but it's empty and dead by contradicting actions. Friendship is already conditioned on profit and a business closing.
We can make this style of Russian roulette go into oblivion, living in uncertainty, ignorance, being a victim, in suspicion, and living by instinct and malice. This should become a stereotype that nobody wants to be a part of, or at least that denote something unpleasant and to try to avoid or strive to the contrary.
Together, we can create an environment that is productive and conducive to progress, respect, learning, and duly created opportunities if we want to live a quality life together with our loved ones and feel appreciated and loved.
We need to be reflective beings, who take a moment to introspect and say, what can I do better? What advice should I apply if I need to figure out what I should improve, without taking it easy and mocking the prudence of the sender's words?
Refuse to live a Russian roulette life, by luck and unconsciousness, and let's value effort, pleasant experiences, learning, and healthy behavior. We will see and experience a positive change in sports and society.
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