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| F. Tibor |
Reflections on watching the World Cup
The World Cup final is drawing near, and the excitement has reached a high pitch. In a short while the losers will be having their post-mortem to see what went wrong for them, while the victorious team and its countrymen will be having their noisy celebrations. With the end of the celebrations all frenzy, piques, wagers, betting, and people stuck in front of their television screens will be over. Pseudo-illnesses will be miraculously cured, and the work-place will be busy again. The world will once again resume its normal rhythm of life.
For a few weeks everything seems to be concentrated on that blessed ball and the twenty-two men who kick it around. And with those twenty-two, millions more, men, women and children all over the world, who during these weeks seem to lose all capacity to think or talk about anything else. Football seems to be the only thing that is of universal and prolonged interest.
I used to think that football was a modern game. But I have learnt that variations of it were played by the Greeks and the Romans, who called it harpaston and harpastum respectively, and that in England it has been played since the twelfth century. The natives of Polynesia played a variation of the game using a ball made with bamboo fibres, while the Inuit (Eskimos) used a leather ball filled with moss. It seems that human beings have always and everywhere been fascinated by a round object, and could not resist kicking it around.
And indeed there is something magical about a ball. It is like a magnet attracting whichever foot happens to be near it. As soon as one sees a ball on the floor, one automatically kicks it – even if, like me, one is not a football fan! Just watch a small child, hardly about to walk, doing the same.
So long as the ball that we kick around is made of leather or rubber or some other material, well and good. But unfortunately there are many who kick living footballs, or rather, they make footballs out of other human beings.
There are so many children who are passed from parent to parent like a ball, in the breakdown of a marriage! So many people, seeking help, are sent from place to place without getting the aid they need, because nobody wants to be involved and take responsibility. Many refugees cannot settle down in any country, since nobody wants them. We know of workers who lose their jobs because their employers have no more need of them – or, worse still, because the employers, especially the multinationals, have found cheaper labour elsewhere.
The list of human footballs can be very long. Perhaps many who play this game are not aware of what they are doing. It is good to ask myself: how do I treat the people I come in contact with? Are they real human beings for me, with their own personal dignity, their own worth, no matter how or where they live, no matter what colour of skin they have, what religion they profess, what their sexual orientation is, how rich or poor, influential or otherwise, they are. Do I treat each and every human being with the respect and reverence that is due to them as children of the same Father, loved by God for whom each one is precious and unique?
In a world where discrimination is rife, where injustices and exploitation abound, where many, especially women, have no voice and no importance, where racial hatred rears its ugly head… in this world we live in, created and loved by God who sent his Son to redeem it… may the time come when the only game of football played is one using leather balls!
Katie Mifsud rscj
Province of Malta
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