How I played sports to prove my masculinity in this "Power Hungry/Aggresive" Society, and came to realize the stupidity of these endeavors

Date:   6/20/2005 4:11:30 PM ( 19 y ago)

It seems what kept me from being totally socially introverted was athletics. I was very athletically inclined, in the early years there was soccer. I always just had fun and was never really into the hard-core competition.

Then it was try-outs, oh the stress, but I made it, lucky me. I played basketball through the late elementary school, and junior high and high school years, but high school brought a new sport, football.

I initially played football once in pop-warner, pressured into it by some neighborhood kids who were playing, I begged my parents to let me play so I could PROVE MYSELF as a "tough" kid too. I was not afraid. So after a lot of pleading they let me play.

I hated it that year, it was horrible, I was just above the cut-off in age, so I was the youngest kid in the age group in which I was playing. It was tough, it was violent, it was painful, I didn't like anything about it. This was the beginning of my seventh grade year.

Around comes high school and now their is football once again, I was seduced by the thought of prestige that went along with being a football player and my own fear of not making cut for the basketball team and being left without any sports to play, losing my entire social identity, so I played football, again.

Football is completely insane sport. It is completely abusive, it teaches violence, aggresion, reaction and anger motivation. It teaches you to cultivate, hate, anger, rage as tools. It is truly a micro-casm for out society. The week are crushed and left behind, only those who can smash-mouth with the best are considered stronger, better, more compitent. I channeled my anger, my rage, my confusion, my dissappointment, my self doubt, I became a good football player. I got socially rewarded, I got well known.

Social reinforcement for negative behaviors which ultimately serve no function is a horrible thing, yet it happens all day every day in our socialization institutions such as public schools.

I played throughout the years, through my senior year, and actually became very good. I made second team all league and after being cut from the basketball team my senior year, decided that I would go on and play college football at a local junior college to see if I could earn myself a scholoship.

This brought on a whole new level of EGO, because I was amongst many of the best athletes from the east bay area, and playing a junior college that was in a much less sheltered part of town. The transition began. First love, heart break. Dis-illusioning experiences, humiliation, fear, pain, anger...the cycle of ego grows and repeats and continues. The observer watches, knows, waits.

About this time, as I was an athlete, and athletes need to be physically fit, a new interest was blossoming, what was this body, how did it work, why are we all so different how can I become stronger, more athletic, more powerful.

I got a job as a personal trainer at age 18, at 24 hour fitness. They will hire just about anyone, a great way to get a start up education. For me it was the beginning of a growth process which still has not completed nor will it ever.

I studied to become a personal trainer and I played football at Junior College. More information, more ego, more input, but still searching. I became knowledgable, I asked questions, learned a bit more and a bit more, fighting not to get lost in the eternal black hole of tedious details and infinitely abundant "theories" about this and that, which frustratingly enough seemed to change on a weekly basis. Who knew anything? Is this all made up? Nobody seems to know the a$$ from their elbow. I learned, I grew, I became a big meaty, tough, powerful, kick ass, take names, bad ass football player who could lift a lot of weight, run really fast, and smash face with the best of em'. In fact, I earned a full-ride scholoship. Ok, it was only to a Division 2 school in the midwest, but I figured I was getting my education paid for. I enrolled, shipped out to Missouri and enrolled in Exercise Science.

That was to be my only year playing football at that school. My only year studying exercise sciene. After one semester, enough time at this new school, in the middle of nowhere Missouri, I started to go deep, to reflect profoundly. Between the depths of depression, the girlfriends, the games, football practices, games, drunken nights at parties, I started to know, I started to feel, I began to realize, this was never me, this was never myself, this never was fun, this was never joy. This was never MY truth. Whose was it?

This was who society wanted me to be, this is who fear pushed me to be, this is what I was CONDITIONED TO BE. SO who was I??? I was about to go find out.

After the first semester at this school, I applied to San Diego State University, hearing beautiful things about San Diego, probably partially guided by my higher self and partially guided by my lust for beautiful women, abundant booze and partying and plenty of sunshine after the bone chilling cold in Missouri.
I got accepted.

I would walk away from a full ride scholorship, away from football, away from a huge part of a person I had become, to the uknown. Little did I know that in this new environment, nobody new me for what I had done, or who I had been, nobody cared.
I started to study the equivalent of exercise science which was Kinesiology at SDSU, but found it to not be worthwhile in my path, as I had already been a trainer for two years in the bay area and a year in Missouri, so I had plenty of experience. A kinesiology degree could only tell me what I already knew about the body, what I conceptually already had grasped. I had to know more about the world, about myself, about who I was, and why I was this way, and more importantly HOW TO EVOLVE!!

So I went forth, away from Missouri, to a new land, San Diego, at the ripe young age of 21, to Discover new things, meet new people and have new experiences. Little did I know that Light was guiding me, and that I would learn things never fathomed by my egotistical mind of false ideas.

The football years had ended. Or had they.......

 

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