In Italy, professional sports are played once a week, with few exceptions. Among the sports, soccer is The Game. On Sundays, people watch the game. The rest of the week they talk about the game, argue about the game, read about the game, fantasize about the game, and plan for the next one.
Each soccer game lasts 90 minutes (with a few, rare, exceptions). Forty-five minutes of uninterrupted bliss, nothing to break the totally focused attention on the 22 players and the white-and-black leather ball. Fifteen minutes of half-time for the commercials and to check what’s going on with the other teams, then other forty-five minutes of game. That’s it. A blink of an eye and it’s over, and all you can do is waiting until next Sunday.
The World Cup is played only once only every four years. Each World Cup is precious and unrepeatable. You can associate specific phases of your life to each World Cup event. Thirty-two teams, 48 + 16 games, two or three 90-minute games a day for a month; no overlapping games. Space around each game to reflect and meditate.
In the USA, it seems that one can watch sports 24-hours a day 7-days a week. My husband watches basketball games every night (or at least, so it seems to me). A game that has a running time of 1 hour lasts 2 or 3 of our human hours. I still remember the first time I went to watch a football game at the University of Oregon: it never ended. After 4 hours I felt much older and I was really ready to go home. I just had my first experience of football indigestion.
America seems to lack the appreciation for scarcity. We love abundance: the large food servings, the oversized cars, the huge houses.
I miss the artful craft of scarcity. I don’t mean the the painful lack of what is essential for survival and self-respect. I am talking about the skillful manipulation of desire through scarcity that transform even small, trivial things into beautiful, magical experiences. The desire, the distance, the wait, the effort: these are the ingredients of ephemeral but unforgettable moments of happiness.
[Remember Saint Exupery’s Little Prince?
This water was indeed a different thing from ordinary nourishment. Its sweetness was born of the walk under the stars, the song of the pulley, the effort of my arms. It was good for the heart, like a present.]
Isn’t the space between desire and the satisfaction of the desire that makes life worth living? Long life to the World Cup!
June 14, 2006
Great observation, Antonella. The notion of scarcity can be extended to the amount of goal-scoring in soccer, as well. It is an awesome sport! I am a life-long fan.
Soccer is my favorite sport for a number of reasons, none of which I try to explain to my friends or co-workers. It is the skill. It is the patience. It is as much what is missing as what is there. It is the scarcity.
June 19, 2006
I do not like soccer i am intrested in public health research.