Overlooking Vancouver
I’ve always preferred playing sports to watching them. In fact, I’ve only ever enjoyed watching sports that I’ve had at least some minimal experience at playing before I’ve watched them.
For me, at least, there’s a level of understanding, a kind of sensual, visceral understanding, that I can’t get from watching someone else or hearing the rules explained.
But beyond this, I think it’s safe to say that the primary purpose of sports is not to be watched; the raison d’etre of sport is playing.
Victory: a common goal
It’s no coincidence that both the Olympic games and the idea of virtue were born in the same place. Both are different ways of striving for excellence, for the best one is able to achieve. They are both about doing something well.
In a sense, the Olympics are about reaching the heights of human ability as it is expressed in the body. It is a delight in the body, a rejoicing in strength and speed and skill. And, in the ancient games, it was an offering of this glory for the honor of the gods. Even today, the victory of any particular athlete or team is bestowed upon the whole nation to which the victor belongs.
In other words, sports teach us that even our greatest achievements are not entirely our own. My glory, my victory, is something that I receive from others, and that I hand on to others.
Virtue and victory
This is the kind of knowledge I feel when playing sports, rather than just watching them. I feel connection – to my teammates, to my opponents, to the field or the court I played on, to my own body. It is a strange kind of finding myself by losing myself in the action.
And, strangely enough, this is the kind of knowledge I sometimes gain when I know I am acting virtuously. I feel connected to the people around me, whether friends or clients or strangers. I feel … how do I put it? I feel my self doing the acts of virtue, whether it’s an act of my mind (like making a good choice) or an act of my body (like doing hard work).
It’s a kind of victory: victory over the temptations of fear or laziness or illusion. This is why we sometimes talk about treating life like a game, or a sport: we’re evoking that sense of challenge and striving for victory. We’re calling on that knowledge that goes beyond the brain to every cell in our bodies.
The moral dimension
The difference, of course, is that a person can be a gold-medal athlete and still be a real jerk. The excellence that virtue seeks is excellence at being human. It’s not about any one action or kind of action; it’s about how we act. Virtue is about doing everything we do in the most humane or human way possible.
The victory of virtue, the prize and the glory, is not what we claim or achieve: it is what we become. Our prize is ourselves.
