Rohan Roberts | 11 June 2014
I can hear the shouts of derision already: “Screw you, Scrooge!” “Shout out ‘Bah-Humbug’ and be done with it.” “Curmudgeon, spoilsport, party-pooper…” I can readily imagine a rich collection of evocative words that will trip lightly off the tongue of any football fan, if I speak my mind. But I’ll say it anyway: “I wish we didn’t make such a big deal about the FIFA World Cup – and all sporting events in general.”
Football is a wonderful sport, and I’ll confess, when I was a kid I too was a fan – and was a dab hand at it (or rather, wielded a feisty foot). I too wept as a kid when Brazil lost; and shrieked with glee when they won. But as the epistle says, “When I was a child I spake as a child and thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things.” I am not sorry to say for the record, that I don’t give a flying toss about football anymore; and the World Cup can come and go without making the slightest difference to my life.
Yes, by all means let us enjoy the spectacle that the World Cup has to offer. Yes, let’s celebrate the rich cultural diversity that football brings. Yes, let’s be thankful for this wonderful sport that unites the world. And yes, let’s admire the brilliant skills the footballers will put on display.
But let’s also, for crying out loud, be a bit circumspect about the whole thing. All this flag-waving, chest-beating, trumpet-blowing, anthem-singing, weeping, wailing, shrieking, gnashing of teeth, and nationalistic fervour makes me feel a bit queasy. It’s not war, folks, it’s just a game. A stark raving lumbering cliché as that might be, it really is just a game. 22 men running around a field trying to kick a ball into a net.
Zoom out a bit. Take a cosmic perspective. Imagine riding on the Voyager 1 space probe as it took the famous ‘Pale Blue Dot’ image of earth from 6 billion km away – in which out of 500,000 pixels of darkness, earth was just half a pixel – a pale blue dot.
Consider the words of Carl Sagan: “The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.”
And to my mind, if the human species spends the kind of time, money, energy, and resources on promoting a cosmic perspective of the human condition instead of on childish games, our world would improve significantly.
So whether Brazil wins or loses, whether Spain lifts the cup or not, whether Germany triumphs or fails in the first round… please, let’s not have the spectacle of grown men crying when their team loses. There are other things happening in the world that are far more worthy of our tears, hopes, dreams, and aspirations than a game.
And remember, it’s just a game.
And so, let the games begin! Enjoy.
