Assuming that most readers of this blog already enjoy sports in one way or another (I am not taking a huge leap of faith here), I doubt there will be any converts. My words will fall on mute ears and blind eyes, the first of several ironies—those in need of conversion will not read it and those already converted need not read it. Yet, a “service” is held below, as much in hopes of (re)conversion or reassurance as of advancing understanding. Alas! This may be a thread that would amuse Camus and his hero, Sisyphus, because of an underlying absurdity I leave up to others to explore. There are three parts. I entreat you, dear readers, to bear the burden with me, while the next two sections-as-postings “be-come”.*
Introductory Rites
Hymn. Let’s face the rock.
In the first place, why should we push the rock at all, when we know it is going to roll back down? To rephrase this in a way more germane and appealing to, ironically again, unsporting temperaments: Why should we care about pursuing sports and physical activity at all? Or to put it another way: what reasons can we, converts, give to those heathens and slothful cynics who shun sports and physical activity to join in our rule-governed exertions? Particularly when our allotted and cumulative energy in this valley where toil is guaranteed is a very limited amount, the expense of which sees us exiting for good. Before anyone spends any more energy on this, it would be good to have an answer to that.
Psalm. Pushing the rock and setting up the problem.
I am going to fling an accusatory stone (for which I will surely have to atone). A contemporary Spanish writer of note, Juan Manuel de Prada, whose novels have received all kinds of prizes in the old country, during an interview for the most widely read Sunday newspaper supplement stated, I suppose with no small glee, that: “Sport is the most nefarious legacy that Ancient Greece handed down to us” (XLSemanal, July 13th, 2008, p.78, my translation).
A bit of context will help to frame my choice to make an example of him in more than one way, and as model of “sinner” to be converted. Of a generously plump build, he comfortably embodies the stereotype of the pure intellectual suspicious of physical labors, down to his conch eyeglasses, double chin, and parsimony of movement (ironically, I am not trying to be insulting). According to him, he last ran when he was 16, a good quarter of a century ago. In other words, he could become the Saint Spare-Me-The-Sweat of couch potatoes some day (which is not too farfetched, given his dogmatic devoutness in matters Catholic and the frequency of his visits to the Holy See for journalistic purposes).
Penitential Rite: Becoming the rock and adding salt to the wound.
Camus speaks of how Sisyphus becomes the rock at one point in his struggle up the hill. Last year, after a public lecture I gave as part of my university’s faculty lecture series, where I explored the philosophical benefits of sport, a colleague asked me: “All this is fine and dandy for us who already enjoy physical activity, but how do we get to exercise or enjoy sports those who simply don’t like them?” Damnation and mortification! Shock on my part! Amid the flock, how dared this acolyte, model member of the “Health and Human Performance Studies” parish, come so close to apostasy?
And yet, both, her question and the Spanish writer’s remark bore the promise of epiphanic redemption should their challenge be met: Sport and physical activity are universally endorsed, often reluctantly and temporarily embraced by those on whom the message is forced upon, on a variety of fronts: many of these reduce to the utilitarian concerns having to do with the health benefits and concerns over the ever growing equatorial growth of waistlines and narrowing of arterial passages. Then, there is the more “pure at heart” eulogizing of the intrinsic enjoyment to be found in these sort of vigorous activities (just in what this intrinsic worth lies is puzzling itself, but something I leave for another occasion). Yet both persuasions prove, time and again, ineffectual. The devilish temptation to relapse onto the comforts of prostration, the inertness of reading, indulgence in the listless intellectual and sensual pleasures of the arts, computerized pastimes, or worse and more common, TV stupor—all garnished with copious amounts of fat-laced snacking—prove to be irresistible.
We have pushed the rock up the hill. The view from the top is not as magnificent surmised: the horizon is strewn with languid bodies as far as the eye can see. For most, this rock-pushing trek is not worth the effort. Unless your appetite devolves into a gluttonous hunger for self-induced, pointless punishment—the penitence for this being forced passivity, of course. But that is not our problem today. Rather, it is the opposite.
What will inspire those motion-allergic people to push their own rock up a hill (even if it might be pointless on some deep sense), not (only) because it is healthy but because it is … fun? How can we find not just solace but deliverance and embrace the good cause? The rock rolls down again.
Jesús Ilundáin-Agurruza
Linfield College
* If adulation will not work with as sophisticated a mind as yours, perhaps the insinuation of shared toil after worthiness and atonement will. As an aside, and of all the things for which I could express contrition, I offer no apology for the less than orthodox nature of this post—stylistically heretical from a philosophical stance but genuinely seeking to follow Sophia, for those who have the ears to hear and the eyes to see.
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