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Only a Game

The World Cup sees teams from around the world meeting in friendly competition to try to lift soccer's biggest prize. It sees many more, billions in fact, of fans around the globe tuning in to cheer their favorite teams and players. But the World Cup is a microcosm of life and offers Spiritual as well as sporting lessons a plenty.

Win or Lose

Try to win, to the best of your ability. Give it everything you have. But, whatever the result, win or lose, pat yourself on the back for having performed to the best of your ability. At the end of the day the scores are wiped from the slate, but the experience gained in the process remains a part of you, the real you, forever.

Be a Player, not a Spectator

In the World Cup the fate of each nation's footballing pride rests in the hands of a mere 23 individuals. All the thousands that attend or the millions that tune in on TV are mere spectators. Similarly in life we can spectate, or we can play. But unlike the World Cup we can all be players - if we so choose.

Being a player means taking active control of our life path, moving from the passenger's to the driver's seat. Not simply going with what others say just for a quiet life, but positively seeking to pursue our own goals and ideals to the best of our ability.

Choosing to be a player may be much hard than standing on the sidelines watching the game progress. Inevitably we'll suffer a few knocks, and a few defeats. But ultimately, and this is what really counts, in terms of experience we will gain infinitely more.

Review and Reassessment

As games progress so coaches often have to tear up carefully prepared game plans in light of the unexpected. Instead new tactics must be created and implemented on the fly, perhaps as a change of formation, or a substitution or two. Often the most successful teams are those that can best react to the unanticipated. In life too, we need both a game plan as well as the ability to react and adapt to ever-changing circumstances.

Significance and Perspective

For that brief period when a match is in progress it seems the most important thing in the world to players and fans alike. Emotions swing wildly from high to low with every touch of the ball. Then someone scores a goal. If it's your side - elation. If it's the other lot, your heart sinks.

So with the ups and downs of life. Every day has numerous little successes and frustrations. In the moment they feel hugely significant. But with the passing of time they drift ever further into the depths of the past. So even do the big events - marriage, having a child, business success, moving house, losing a loved one... though the process takes longer.

At the final whistle it's joy for some, despair for others. For a little while. Then other matters move back into attention and we return to normality.

Life also has a final whistle. Rich man, poor man, beggar, king, all reach the final destination of physical death. And though the experience remains with that individuated soul, its accompanying emotions fade into insignificance and ultimately vanish.

In life, as in soccer, always give your best. But at the end of the day, remember, it's only a game.