The Sport of the Mind: Quit Playing Games

My dad tells me that the best way to win a stare down is to act like a jerk and attempt to kiss the lips of the opponent. No way would the stare hold after that, he adds. Go dad, another attempt to make me the sports addict that you are.

While all of us like to be Tiger Woods and Alex Rodriguezes at whatever we do, we would be happy to skip the ‘getting tangled in sex scandals and drug abuse’ chapters. Ah, wouldn’t that make us all perfect Roger Federrers. But hey, don’t we all take different forms, sizes and shapes every time? What is it about these gladiators that make us see them in every one that we encounter everyday?

All through our lives we have been constantly hounded by the ‘grownups’ to believe that the world is a circus.  But it has taken about twenty five years of my life to realize that our lives are more of WWE ring where almost everything is orchestrated. Out of nowhere I find myself in the middle of no-hold barred matches with tables, ladders ad chairs flying right at my face.  The John Cenas’ and Brock Lesnars’ sprout out of thin air to pin you down just when you are about to spring up before the 3-count. Funny how I have spent my life evading the browbeatings and surviving the onslaught so much that I no longer remember that I am supposed to be the most valuable player (MVP) of my life.

When every girl around me would want to have a chance for a cat walk at the fashion ramp, my life is worthy of Air time on Sky sports. Thanks to the family of maniacal sportsmen and women, all I could see is my life being a playground to every conceivable sport.

I wouldn’t go as far to say that my man-mountain of a bald security at my apartment is Shaq O’Neal. Most certainly, I would like my boyfriend to be David Beckham but of course I could there is always those three shots of Tequila that would help me with the make belief.

My mom, well, she is just the perfect female version of McEnroe. Good game, extremely good technique (come on, how else do you explain the high quality process of making me) but the temper of a spark to a trail of gun powder; Instantaneously explosive and doesn’t give 2 pennies about who is right when it comes to her taking on anyone. More often than not, she comes up triumphant.

As is the obvious case with every one, I work under a strange supervisor. The types, who knows what the result should be – not favorable – and takes the team towards the exact wrong location. Graeme Smith as we like to call him, is an expert in achieving such under-performance levels that others have actually started expecting it from the team, by default. Choke up like only he can, he leads a team capable of touching extremely high standards and every single time and churns out the last block stumble like it was his birth duty.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, enter the Diego Costa of my life. Arrogant, rowdy and dramatically brittle, if at all there could be a concoction like that. The guy in my life thinks he bleeds liquid gold and I have jalapeño sauce running through my veins. First to take a dive at the blow of a cool breeze, he bulldozes his way through me like I never existed. But hey, Costa has a goal post to target but the this joker seems to have only one goal – steam roll over me.  Multiple attempts to catch his eyes and to win the stare down have gone down the drain.

Why is it that we do not see an all conquering Micheal Schumacher around us? Why not an unassailable Usain Bolt that just stacks up on the wins? Would we be happy seeing one of them around us? Well that’s not how world works, right?

Image Sources: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]