Ode to Sport

I don't think you ever really know your own country until you spend some considerable time elsewhere as a foreigner. What is unique, desirous or noteworthy of your native country can never really be perceived until you’re plunged into the chaos and newness of a foreign culture. A culture where you have neither authority nor knowledge of the workings or origins of its customs.

It’s from this place of humility and wonder that the prodigal son finally sees what it is that has always connected him to his birthplace. That with which he cannot live without. And it is always that which calls him home, prodding him to lay to rest the wanderlust of his youth, and to undertake the difficult reconciliation with an unchanging past and far more familiar future.

As springtime slowly returns to Northern France, just as much as the almond blossoms and warm spring sun of my youth, I’m reminded of the return of baseball season. Indeed, of all the cultural aspects I miss most from back home, the American sports calendar is felt most strongly.

The New Year fervor of bowl games and the frigid warfare of the NFL playoffs slowly ceding way to spring’s playoff excitement in hockey and basketball. The languorous dog days of summer at the ballpark culminating in the chill of October baseball and the return of crisp fall afternoons with the sting of pigskin on bare hands.

Most of my youth can be seen as a sort of active meditation centered on the pursuit or practice of those sports at the heart of American culture. And I have no doubt that this education did as much for me as any other to open my eyes to the wonder of this world and my place in it.

One does well to resist the temptation to reduce the sports world to one of overheated egos and runaway testosterone. To the unpracticed eye it may appear so but to the true seer there is a world of myth and moral truth of incomparable richness. And it’s every bit as true as those found in the more respectable domains of literature or politics.

Indeed, given the choice between a randomly chosen ballgame, movie or book, I’ll choose the ballgame any day. As I find it’s much easier to lie and hide behind convention and sentiment in the arts (theater excepted perhaps) than in the world of sports. Remember I’m in the midst of a French literature MA too. Of course if I had to choose between Maupassant’s short stories or the Magic-Bird battles of my youth I’m not sure the choice would be at all the same.

The real tragedy though is the crude, reductive choice we're so often pressured into as children between what are two of the great joys in life, sport and art. I only wish that rather than see the world in terms of jocks and geeks, we begin to imagine each life as a canvas or playing field (choose your metaphor) where we might explore the great play of ego and id we’re all engaged in.

The crude specialization our society forces upon us has created a world where sport and art have been reduced to passive, consumer experiences for far too many people. This Faustian wager is perhaps the most dangerous of all those offered us. For both body and soul are lost in it and little joy can ever come in its wake. The good news is you don't have to buy into this lie.

It wasn't the sensible advice of some guidance counselor or career coach that allowed Ruth and I to spend two of the most enriching years of our lives here in France. It was the courage to take a chance and believe in the vital necessity of following our dreams. Indeed, had we taken the sensible route we would have certainly never left our teaching jobs back home in Long Beach.

It should come as no surprise though that both of us are former college athletes. For much of the courage it took to follow our dreams to France was no doubt forged on the courts and playing fields of our youth. In this same way, sports have played an equally vital role in helping me adapt to each new culture I've encountered along my life's journey.

For all the wonderful cultural richness I experienced in Africa, one of my most memorable experiences was watching Brazil beat Germany in the World Cup final in the company of my Mauritanian host family. I’d canceled classes that afternoon to make it home in time for the start of the match. Our TV was powered by a car battery and we watched, reclining against the cool mud walls of their modest home. Each time Brazil threatened to score, a torrent of shouting and support would fill the air in Pulaar, their native tongue.

Our stay in France has been marked by similar excursions into the French sporting world. Just as much as the language or cuisine, these sporting excursions have allowed me to understand the culture in ways I’d have not been capable without. As much as anything else it was watching Federer win on a rainy Sunday in Paris for the first time that will mark our time here in France. These experiences have been of an incalculable worth.

Amidst all these travels I’ve never forgotten that the first really vital lessons I learned in life were on the playing field. Whether it was the times learning baseball from my dad or the long solitary hours shooting hoops in the driveway while recreating the epic battles of my heroes, sports have so often been the compass by which I've navigated the mystery and wonder of this world.

And with each new spring, the promise of hope eternal is renewed. As I recall again the simple joy and mystery I first knew as a boy back home. One boy standing alone before the world and his dreams.

The French Paradox

Today I'd like to dive into one of the dietary clichés so often bandied about by Americans: the French Paradox. The idea that a couple glasses of wine, a nice piece of foie gras and a healthy dose of joie de vivre are all you need to live a long, healthy and happy life. For it's an idea that many Americans seem to buy into.

Certainly one can be relatively happy eating almost any type of diet. And happiness is too broad an art form to reduce to the sum of what you put on your plate each day. Rather it's the first two adjectives I'll humbly take exception with in this post. That's to say, are the French really any healthier or longer living than Americans?

To begin with the health claims of the so-called French Paradox have long been overblown if not downright false. Any supposed difference in heart disease is more than offset by the similar disease rates from which the French suffer in almost all other areas of health. Disease rates that mirror other countries that eat a similar Western diet.
Indeed, healthy adult life expectancy varies little between Western countries. A few years of generally declining health does not constitute a reasonable dietary goal in my opinion. Nor does the prospect of diseases like cancer or Alzheimer's that can seriously diminish not only the quantity but the quality of our lives. So all health claims aside, lets take a look at the other inherent claim to the French paradox, the pleasure principle. Fiction or fact?

Before we begin, let me say that the French do a lot of things right in my view. Selection and preparation of ingredients is taken seriously. The variety of fresh produce and other items is impressive and affordable. Once the meal prepared, much more time is dedicated to the ritual of dining than in the US. Meals are eaten with friends and family in a setting that befits them.

The culture of fast food, while making further inroads each year, remains far less evident in France than in America. There still exists a strong social taboo in regards to snacking between meals, whose hours you can literally set your watch by. For an American in France, these social rules can surprise by their unbending rigidity. But how does it all translate in regards to pleasure?

First, let's say that the French in general are far thinner than most Americans, a fact that's true though of almost every other nation on Earth. Thinness is of course a relative standard and the French are far from immune to obesity or excess weight. Lets just say that not all French women are skinny bitches by any means. But more importantly, those that are in my experience are almost just as paranoid about their weight as many American women.

For no sooner does one of their infamously rich entrées or desserts arrive at table than a barrage of fat-phobic dialogue fills the air. "Oh, ça fait grossir" (Oh, how fattening). Or "je vais faire exploser ma balance" (literally: I'm gonna make my scale explode). I have nothing against a woman wanting to stay thin but its this type of behavior that can put a guy positively off his appetite.

For surely there is no less pleasurable way to eat a meal than with this type of guilt or anxiety surrounding it. This type of "bad faith" as Sartre would call it has become as entrenched in the flow of many dinners I've attended as the detailed descriptions of the origin and character of the wine or cheese selected for the meal. I find it incredibly bad taste to subject your neighbor to your own dietary hang-ups at the moment of crowning pleasure of the meal.

Because if you do occasionally partake of rich cuisine you can either honor how your body will handle it or continue to play the role of the tortured gourmand. I would argue for the former. For there is a beauty in the fact that your human body has been honed through millennia of rich evolution with its environment to look upon this piece of foie gras or camembert as an excellent chance to stock away extra calories for a rainy day.

It is a luxury most people throughout human history would not have taken nearly so lightly. For in their simple wisdom lay a truer understanding of what feasting should mean. Only in a society of such decadent abundance could we so pervert our natural instincts, swapping gratitude for guilt and joy for vanity.

But a truer understanding would let you happily enjoy your dessert because you'd have ample faith in the excellence of the rest of your diet to keep you thin, healthy and happy. Gone will be the tortured choice between thin and happy, between pleasure and pride. Such a recognition represents one of the rare chances remaining for us to break free from our body-hating culture and make friends once more with the most elemental part of ourselves, the body.

And one shouldn't deny the beauty of a thin, capable body in this world for it's one of the most divine forms of our human condition, a true work of art. But if it comes at the price of anxiety and worry, we will have made an enemy of our body. And such a trade-off should never be justified. Nor should we sacrifice a thin, healthy body in the mistaken belief eating will thus be pleasure-less and dull.

This world exists for you to be free in and anyone who tells you otherwise is surely no wise man nor artist. For you can have your cake and eat it too. The art is entirely in knowing how.

So please be happy and well little cell.