Letter: Why I don’t like to watch the World Cup

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Sports is all about competition. The first thing I have seen, or I had experienced in my life is competition. Each of us is the winner of the competition in the beginning of life, if you know what I mean. It does not make me like it more, though.

We compete to enter the best school, achieve best score at exams, find best job as we can, and compete for higher salary as we can. At home since childhood we compete to gain more affection or attention from parents among siblings.

We compete with neighbors, there is an English idiom is Keeping up with the Joneses. But this phenomenon is universal. Keeping up with Li’s, Jose’s, Tanaka’s or Bernards, if you would say.

When the opportunities are not enough to give to everyone, we have to compete so we can obtain more and better resources and will not be left out. If I win, I feel sorry for the losers. If the loser is me, I feel sorry for myself. That’s why I don’t like competition because I will be sorry anyway.

You might say, sports is not all about competition. There is team spirit, collaboration, self improvement, etc. I advocate Self Improvement, but people can achieve it at their backyard. Once you go out to the public and play the world cup, you are going to beat down your opponents and get the only championship under your and your country’s name as if patriotism will add halo to competition and excuses all the adverse effects.

Competition is destructive. There is only one champion’s name can be remembered, the 2nd, 3rd will be forgotten. This is very unfair. People are not born equal. Some are born better in terms of physical condition and intelligence. Majority of humankind is plus minus average, not going too far away.

Speaking of World Cup, the referee’s ethics issue, match fixing, the players fake falls and fake injuries, the sports gambling and fans riots caused too much turbulences to the society. What is so exciting to watch this a-month-long chaos? It’s all about competition of fame and money, sometimes at the cost of life.

Competition is the greediness of humankind, residual of animal drive, the embryonic form of war. Like the Bible says: I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind. So with the World Cup.

Once I see the 22 players chasing like crazy after the only one innocent ball for about two hours, the only thing I want to do is to cover my eyes, it is really painful to look at these poor people. I would rather buy each of them a ball so they can all be happy, and so am I.

Song Li, Seymour Toastmaster Club

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