What if aliens were watching us?

Sports are a curious matter.

Different varieties have been around the world since the beginning of civilization. Being a participant in sports at a high level today, I can’t help but wonder, what if aliens were watching us?

Think about any sporting event you have ever been to and try to argue that any alien watching would not come to the conclusion that we are insane beings for having such a thing as sports.
People screaming and yelling, cheering in triumph and crying in defeat; then if you think about all the money involved it becomes even crazier.

Go ahead.  Think about it.  Then proceed to read the rest of the post.

After a tough loss, I often try to bring things into perspective with positive thoughts. The cliché “It’s just a game,” often goes through my brain, and I truly try to wrap my head around the idea of it just being a game.

I think of the car rides home from my 4-year-old self’s soccer games. Having grown up in Minnesota, I always remember them being on beautifully cold, fall mornings.

I remember every kid who played looked like a round rosy-cheeked ball because of the layers of sweatshirts they had on underneath their brightly colored T-shirt jerseys. And most of all I remember the popular phrase my mother coined.

On these car rides, as I would begin to enjoy my juice box and oatmeal cake (that I received during the post-game ceremony affectionately referred to as “snacks”) my mother would ask what she always asked me and my brothers after a game.

“Did you have fun?”
“...Yea.” I would respond after some hesitation, happy that the snack was delicious.
“Then you won.” My mom would always say, “Because if ya had fun, ya won.”

This phrase was used all the way through high school by me and my brothers, usually as a joke, but it always had that grain of truth in it.

I run this rhyme over and over in my head, but sometimes even reminding myself that I am having fun doesn’t help. Sometimes losing just hurts, and I can’t help but wonder why.

Why do we put so much emphasis on a sport ... on something that is just meant to be fun? Well, I think I am finally starting to realizing why.

Whenever I would be sad about a season’s ending when I was a kid, whether it was basketball, soccer or track, I would always use the Cubs fan’s mentality of “there is always next year” and it would help me move on and think about what’s next.

However, there aren’t that many “next years” left these days.
My time as a competitive sports player seems finite now, and every second of every game seems that much more important, because I don’t have that many left.

These first two seasons of mine have seemed to fly by, and that leaves me with just two left.  That’s it — two years.

I think it is always a good reminder to seize the carp, and this is one of those reminders for me.

No one can play a sport forever — no matter how many times Brett Favre decides to come out of retirement, even he won’t be able to play much past 40 (about half of a normal lifetime) and he is considered an old man in the sporting world. 

That’s the reality.

The window in life for being able to play a sport is extremely small, which makes every second of every game that much more important now.