Zen And The Game of Football

Zen & The Art Of Football

It was his first football trip, we’d bought tickets for the Champions League finals in Munich on a lark, and thankfully we managed to make it to Munich on those dates. I’ve been to many football games before… I’ve travelled nations, crossed continents—the works—to witness history being made. But for my friend, it was a whole new experience, a whole new universe that had suddenly opened up for him… It was like watching Alice take her first few tentative steps into the wonderland. At the end of two days, my football-virgin friend was a convert. Watching my friend finding delight in football made me take a closer look at my own relationship with the sport I’ve spent almost two decades with. Football is so much a part of my life, we’re so deeply connected, that I’d forgotten the time when it all began. Spending time with a newly minted football fan led to a paradigm shift. Through him, I revisited the start of my journey, pondered about the long road I’ve travelled since and marveled at where I stand today. I realised that the game that I love so has changed me as a person, taught me lessons I wouldn’t have learned otherwise and has been a symbol of permanence in my life. It’s my own personal life coach, therapist and spiritual guru all rolled into one!

Let me start with the most basic of the life lessons that football has taught me. It’s taught me to push and break boundaries set by others. Think about it: when you’re sitting in Germany sandwiched between a man from Mexico and a woman from Vietnam, watching an English team owned by a Russian guy with players from the Ivory Coast, France and Portugal, playing against a German team with just 4 native players; what will you think about? At that time, Samar Khan, Mumbai, India, becomes a very small part of my identity. I’m a part of something bigger, and something within me surges to meet and embrace that new bigness of purpose.

The world comes together on a football field. Not just physically, but mentally. It’s awe-inspiring to be living an experience with people from more countries that one person can visit in a lifetime of travelling. It is exhilarating to find a friend in a pocket of the world you didn’t even know existed! A football field makes you realise the vastness of the world and the smallness of our lives… When we’re restricted to one small corner of the world, we start believing that our problems and our joys are bigger than they really are… That we’re actually just a very small piece of a very large universe… The football field is the best place to discover that the world and our lives don’t need to end in our backyards…

I’ve witnessed two football world cups and both times have been life-changing experiences. Your passport ceases to matter on a football field. You’re just two people, from opposite corners of the world sitting in the bleachers, sipping beer and possibly making a new friend. You might be supporting each others’ nemesis, but the love of the game is too big, all-encompassing and all-consuming to be tarnished by these differences. I wonder that if we can do it for football, why can’t we apply this principle in all spheres of our lives… Why can’t we break boundaries and be unified by a common love?

Football is what is common between 178 nations in this world... Each country has its own food, culture, clothes, flavours and weathers. But amidst all these distinctions, there is one common ground where all these countries meet—football. It is the one game that is played the same way all over the world. Unlike cricket, there are no versions of the sport, or different formats like in car racing… It is the same everywhere… It is the medium through which the underprivileged of these countries can come into their own and take their place on the world stage. It doesn’t need any fancy training or special equipment to play… It is simply a celebration of pure talent and grit. The games history is littered with examples of legends that have come from nothing and gone on to conquer the world with their genius in the game. Football is an equalizer. It treats humble beginnings the same as it would a kingdom’s heir.

Often enough, in our hectic lives, we’ve wished for the world to stop for a few seconds so we could get off the carousel that our lives have turned into. For me, football is that emergency lever that brings everything to a screeching halt. When I’m watching football, the world and its problems cease to exist and to matter. Football is my reprieve from the maddening world. The unadulterated joy after a goal, and even the crushing disappointment if my team loses, are like escape routes in a burning building for me. Those 90 minutes are the closest one can come to feeling an emotion in its purest form. Those emotions are not at the mercy of the aches and pains of the real world. The mind stops working and the heart works overtime. So there is no politics and no prejudice… Just pure love for the sport.

It gives me hope… It makes me believe that if I’m capable of loving a sport with so much passion, I can love many other things created by god for us… Thanks to football, despite the confusing and multi-layered world I live in, I know I’m capable of pure love and passion. Most of us lack that kind of faith in ourselves. I owe my reaffirmation to football! Its something that has liberated my soul

PS: If any woman ever feels that men can’t be loyal, make her meet a football fan. More likely than not, he still supports the football club he supported as a child! ;)