Been reading this very well written book on the beautiful game (soccer). In one passage, he talks about Albert Camus and his experience of playing as a goalkeeper. Thought it was a beautiful passage and wanted to share.
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Camus later recalled the experience of confronting one particularly rough forward nicknamed “Pastèque”—watermelon—over and over again. “He commanded all his weight against my kidneys. I also received a shin massage from his rough boots, some shirt-grabbing, occasional knees in the noble regions, and sandwiches in the post.” But, Camus went on, he came to understand that even the relentless Pastèque had “good in him” and should be respected as a player. “The world has taught me much, but what I retain on morals and the obligation of man, I owe to sport, and it’s at RUA that I learned it.”
What had he learned, precisely? In his novel The Stranger, Camus famously wrote from the perspective of a narrator who, when he learns he is going to be executed, reminds himself that “it’s common knowledge that life isn’t worth living anyhow.” As he puts it, “Whether I died now or forty years hence, this business of dying had to be got through, inevitably.” Maybe it was the goalie in Camus—drawing on the intimate understanding of futility that comes from having to pull the ball out of the net, again and again—who created a character who understood that, in “the wide view,” it really makes no difference when one dies because “other men and women will continue living, the world will go as before.”
Existentialist philosophy, at its core, is about accepting the inevitability of death and the concomitant absurdity of life. But it is also, at least in its slightly more optimistic variants, about using that knowledge to find a way to live in the world, to keep going, knowing that while we can make choices about how we live each day, we can’t ultimately control the outcome. More than any other player in soccer, the goalie is always reminded of this. However hard she tries and whatever effort she makes, the goalie will often be powerless in the face of fate, the ball endlessly slipping past her into the net. And yet, somewhat miraculously—but also absurdly—the goalie keeps trying anyway. Even if her team is down by many goals and is clearly going to lose, the goalie—knowing there is really no point—still dives courageously, bashing into the ground, trying to stop one more goal from going in.”
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Camus later recalled the experience of confronting one particularly rough forward nicknamed “Pastèque”—watermelon—over and over again. “He commanded all his weight against my kidneys. I also received a shin massage from his rough boots, some shirt-grabbing, occasional knees in the noble regions, and sandwiches in the post.” But, Camus went on, he came to understand that even the relentless Pastèque had “good in him” and should be respected as a player. “The world has taught me much, but what I retain on morals and the obligation of man, I owe to sport, and it’s at RUA that I learned it.”
What had he learned, precisely? In his novel The Stranger, Camus famously wrote from the perspective of a narrator who, when he learns he is going to be executed, reminds himself that “it’s common knowledge that life isn’t worth living anyhow.” As he puts it, “Whether I died now or forty years hence, this business of dying had to be got through, inevitably.” Maybe it was the goalie in Camus—drawing on the intimate understanding of futility that comes from having to pull the ball out of the net, again and again—who created a character who understood that, in “the wide view,” it really makes no difference when one dies because “other men and women will continue living, the world will go as before.”
Existentialist philosophy, at its core, is about accepting the inevitability of death and the concomitant absurdity of life. But it is also, at least in its slightly more optimistic variants, about using that knowledge to find a way to live in the world, to keep going, knowing that while we can make choices about how we live each day, we can’t ultimately control the outcome. More than any other player in soccer, the goalie is always reminded of this. However hard she tries and whatever effort she makes, the goalie will often be powerless in the face of fate, the ball endlessly slipping past her into the net. And yet, somewhat miraculously—but also absurdly—the goalie keeps trying anyway. Even if her team is down by many goals and is clearly going to lose, the goalie—knowing there is really no point—still dives courageously, bashing into the ground, trying to stop one more goal from going in.”
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