Saturday, March 29, 2008

Sports and Life

There was a very interesting book review over at Samizdata the other day. It was on the relationship between sports and life, and how lessons learned in sports can often be applied to our lives.

There were two points that stood out for me. The first was that the foundation of success is often a previous failure.
We never think more deeply than about our profoundest failings. They often form the foundations of our clearest analytical insights.
The second was the oft-cited younger brother syndrome. How many times have we heard of the younger sibling, who had to play against older, taller, stronger boys, eventually become a renowned player of his sport, because he had to push himself to his utmost limit, in order to compete?
Basketball legend Michael Jordan had an elder brother, for instance, of whom Jordan said: "When you see me play, you're watching Larry." In learning to defeat Larry, Jordan learned to beat the world.
Singapore soccer may be on the up and up recently, but our footballers are still too... timid? Unskilled? Undetermined? To go overseas in even second class leagues to compete. I rather suspect this is the big fish in a small pond syndrome. Our players just don't want to taste failure, even if it's important in laying the foundations for success in the future. Which is why the FAS is bringing in foreign talent to bolster the ranks. If we can't get our big fish out in the bigger pond, we bring in other big fish from the pond to toughen them up.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home