Games as a metaphor for life

Hello all you sports enthusiasts!
I am sure there are many of you out there who spend some time each week, month, or year plugged into the television watching with awe the exploits of your favorite team. It can be exciting and exhilarating when other people are rooting with you! It is a great experience as we watch superb athletes compete for a prize.

Now for the metaphor.

I find that I live life not by the principles of an athlete playing the game, but rather as a spectator. It seems that life has not become a group activity where everyone is playing the game their hardest and best. Rather, it seems, I am on the sidelines talking on a cellular phone stop to play the game for a few minutes and then do something else. Real athletes spend almost their entire lives practicing for their short time on the field. I bemoan the missed catch and cheer about the amazing touchdown pass, but spend little time thinking about how much time and energy went into that one fantastic moment. Practice in all reality is something I shy away from. It isn't sexy, it is sweaty, hard, boring and repetitious. Practice is very much like the military. It's gritty, dirty and takes motivation, determination, courage and guts. Instead, I find, as a child of my culture I live my life as if I will only have to play the game for two minutes and find even that is too hard. I don't practice to play the entire game of life but rather the convenient moments that are easy and fun. Theodore Roosevelt said this in a speech given at the Sorbonne Paris, France, April 23, 1910 and it bears repeating.

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

Even Paul the Apostle said "Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops." (2 Tim 2:3-6)

Thinking about these things I have been asking myself questions. Am I allowing distraction, laziness, fear and cowardice to rule? Am I on the sidelines cheering, or practicing hard long hours to meet the challenge? Dedication comes through focus on one thing. In all the examples of people who accomplished amazing feats in business, sports, or science we find the willingness to put in long hard hours toward the accomplishment of an amazing goal. The question I am asking myself lately is, Am I living or just subsisting?

How about you?