The games we play

While grocery shopping, we ran into our neighbors and got a late notice invite to watch the Finland v Denmark match for their opening game at EURO 2020. Sounds like fun and we accepted, grabbed some snacks and drinks and headed over. This is Finland's first time in the EUROs and understandably, Finns are pretty excited, considering it doesn't have a long experience with football at the country level.

Unfortunately, nearing the end of the first half, a player, Christian Eriksen, from Denmark suffered some kind of attack and fell to the ground, with one of the Finnish players noticing the seriousness immediately and calling for medical help. At first, the cameras are on the player staring vacantly, but the Danish players soon put a wall around him, arms linked, tears streaming as the medical team firstly hand pumped and then tried to jumpstart his heart with a defibrillator.

It is one of those moments in sport that is going to be seared into many memories.

No matter what team you barrack for, at these times, people are just hoping the player will be okay, but I do not think that they should have been showing as much of this unfold on the screen as they did. The stands were silent, the commentators were struggling, the audience were in tears and the players from both sides were in a state of disbelief. They worked on Eriksen on the field for over ten minutes before they stretchered him off, sheets pulled up around the convey to stop prying eyes, no one sure if he had been resuscitated or not.

Thankfully, news came out about an hour later that he had survived and while the game had been suspended, both teams had decided to pick up where they left off. Which is a testament to them, as after that kind of emotional upheaval, it would be extremely difficult to get back into the frame of mind needed for the game, yet they came out, the Danish team huddled and probably said a few words in prayer for the team mate - and then both teams played as if nothing had happened.

Resiliency is a valuable skill and it seems to be one of those things that can only be learned through active experience. Prepare all you want, it is still only possible to know what the real reaction is be when it is called upon. The proof is in the pudding, as they say.

Resiliency seems to be tied to our determination to fight for life regardless of odds, where we never give up. It seems to be some kind of instinctual mechanism in us that in acute life-threatening situations, fires automatically. However, when we are in non-life-threatening situations, it doesn't fire automatically and instead, we need to train it, in order to access it.

This requires emotional control and it is through experience, feedback, reflection and adjustment that we are able to acknowledge our emotional state and choose to put it aside if that is what we have to do to meet immediate goals. These situations don't have to be life-threatening, they don't have to be during a professional sports game and if anything, we meet them daily.

Mostly, they are low-grade experiences where very little is at stake, yet we need to adjust our attitude to make it through an activity. It might be getting out one or two more reps at the gym or perhaps, denying eating a craved food. It is about choosing the state of personal discomfort, rather than the easier path. The type of circumstance might be on a scale, but training through a lot of small discomforts likely means that the level of discomfort felt will lessen the peaks of the larger.

Some might have some innate skills in this area, but when training, it really is, no pain, no gain. Discomfort is low-level pain and suffering, being able to endure it is a resistance exercise, as the body naturally wants to avoid suffering, so will move when uncomfortable. I think that this is at least part of the reason why some people are able to "deal with more" adversity than others, why some people get very stressed or disrupted over a situation that hardly registers on the experience of another. When professionals make something look easy, it doesn't mean it was easy.

While I can't know for sure, I get the sense that many people have become less resilient over the last decades, which I largely attribute to the conditioning to show emotion, rather than control it. There is nothing wrong with showing our emotions, but if they are "ours", that means we have a choice. Much of society is driven by a lack of emotional control, with a lot of outrage and violence the byproduct.

While I do not think they needed to show as much of the player suffering on the field, I am also glad they did. People are already up in arms about it, outraged on social media, saying that it was disrespectful to the player and his family, that the streaming stations should have cut away - but, they miss their own failure. They are sitting in front of their TV in their home - they could have switched off or left the room at any point - but they didn't. If we are going to talk about responsibility for the content displayed, we also have to take responsibility as consumers. We make our own decisions on what we choose to watch and, whether we close our eyes.

It might have been hard for many to watch, but the really uncomfortable question is why they continued watching. The uncomfortable truth is, most watched because they were entertained.

The games we play.

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]