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If Only Life Were Like Sports Posting Date: Jul 29 2007 10:45AM Life should be more like a sport season. Every sport year divides into the pre-season, the regular season, the play-offs and the off-season. In soccer, we call the pre-season “friendlies.” In tennis, the play-offs are the Grand Slam events, or for golfers, the Majors. Regardless of the labels, the concept is the same: four distinct phases of readiness and competition, each clearly identified, each with its own purpose.
The pre-season doesn’t count. It’s just there to help us get ready for the more important stuff that happens later. It’s all about improving skills in a supportive environment where failure isn’t failure – it’s a learning experience. The regular season matters, but it’s not life-and-death. It matters in a don’t-forget-to-get-milk kind of a way. If you forget, it’s a pain in the ass, but you can always do better the next time you leave the house.
In the play-offs, if you screw up, there’s no tomorrow. If you forget the milk in the play-offs, all the stores are closed and your in-laws are waiting with hot cups of tea. You’re going to hear about it for the rest of your life. That’s play-off pressure.
That pressure is why athletes need the off-season to rest, recover, shoot their Nike commercials and guest host Saturday Night Live.
Life, unfortunately, is nothing like a year of sport. Life is an unrelenting play-off series, often in sudden-death overtime. The off-seasons are only as long as you can stay drunk on Saturday night. And the worst thing of all, there’s no pre-season to get ready. You’re born, life begins and every screw-up suddenly counts on the cosmic score sheet.
You would think that with so much on the line, we would practice our key life skills fanatically, training like an Olympic athlete. But we don’t. Instead, we practice piano, golf, dance steps and knitting. We should practice the skills that matter.
For example, having a nice lawn is important, so before you cut your own grass, you should go to a park and work out with your lawnmower. Once you’re feeling good, it’s time for a “friendly.” Go mow your neighbour’s grass. If you screw up, so what? It’s not your lawn.
The same concepts should apply to far more important life skills like sex, marriage and parenting.
Instead of sending teenagers to swimming lessons and basketball camp, kids should go to Sex Camp. If anyone ever needed a pre-season, it’s sexually inexperienced teens. Why should they be jumping into the sack and fumbling around, rubbing and licking indiscriminately? Instead, they should be learning the right skills the right way. They should be studying the playbook and working on the compulsory figures.
Next up, marriage skills. Getting married too young to the wrong person for the wrong reasons may seem like a good learning experience, but it’s actually more like starting out a sport season with great optimism, only to blow out your knee in the first game. Your whole season is down the toilet and all you have to look forward to is a long period of rehabilitation and a stint in the minor leagues to get your fastball back.
The closest we actually get to marriage training camp is cohabitation which, unfortunately, is not an effective pre-season. Cohabitation is like starting what you think is the relaxing pre-season only to find out far too late that you’re actually deep into the play-offs. Here, one bad mistake is like testing positive for steroids while taking bets on the dog fights. You’re looking at a potential lifetime ban from the game.
Finally, if ever there was a life skill that cried out for a long lead-up before the playoffs, it’s parenting. First, just like in sports, there should be parenting try-outs. You should not make the parenting team just because you passed Sex Camp. There should be a multi-level feeder system for parents, supervised by scouts, coaches and ex-major leaguers like my mother. Once you pass Sex Camp, you get a puppy. If you handle the puppy, you get promoted a level where you have to manage your puppy and an aging parent. If you do well there, you might get called up again to the highest of the minor leagues where you have to work with a puppy, an aging parent and a niece or nephew for an extended period.
If you get through that, you might, just might, get the call to the Big Leagues and get a kid of your own. But you’re still a rookie. If you don’t learn the playbook fast enough or work hard enough in practice, you’re going back down to the minor leagues to work on your game.
Life. It if only it were more like sports. |
