the metaphor of volleyball to life’s realities…..

This object may poignantly represent me for I was a volleyball player when I was in Grade 6 but that stint was cut short because I had to attend to my grandfather’s need for he was deeply-ill. With that, I became his care-giver after my classes in school. Even when I was in high school, I also took care of my grandmother after she suffered from stroke.

Stemming from my early childhood difficult experiences, people believe and say that I had grown to be tough, independent and long-suffering individual. With this, I still had an itch to play volleyball so it drew me to play volleyball in my mind. Serve, pass, attack, block and dig are the skills one has to achieve to become a volleyball player.

This is how I connect playing volleyball to philosophy. Serve is to make the ball land inside the court and it aims to make it difficult for the receiver to handle it properly. In life, it signifies that we need to be competitive because this world is a jungle wherein survival of the fittest is the name of the game. Pass is the attempt to properly handle the opponent’s serve. In life, we need to learn to handle properly the forms of attacks of those people who dislike us. The set is to put the ball in the air driven by an attack into the opponent’s court. It means that we need to outwit the fiercest of those negative elements when our attackers are prowling inside us. The attack or spike is to handle the ball so that it lands on the opponent’s court. It explicitly tells that we need to discern when to play or rest, when to agree or disagree and best of all, when to fight or stop.

A block is aimed at stopping an attack wherein it delivers us from yielding into the trap of our offenders. We need to drop them like a hot potato and block them so as not to enter into our lives unconsciously or consciously. Digging in volleyball is to prevent the ball from touching one’s court after an attack. In life, we maybe put down by our attackers but it inspires us to do not stay on the ground but rise up after the defeat. To sum it all, the philosophy I can unearth in playing volleyball is taken from this quotation “to win the respect of intelligent people, to earn the approbation of honest critic and to endure the betrayal of false friends.”

 

In essence, on a purely human level, people may love or hate me or may accept or reject a certain part of my personality but this is all what it entails coming to terms to declare my philosophy. However, I question myself…. How do I know that I know what I know? Are they rival sets of facts or just my unredeemed illusions in life? Or what I know is something else entirely? With this in mind, I decided to be willing to expose myself to criticisms and challenges just because of my philosophy exemplifying a young blood yet with aged spirit.

The penetrating power of being a volleyball player for just a short period of time inspires me to love sports and athleticism even more. In like manner, I may explore sports and athleticism at all costs and how I may combine them, work upon them and integrate them in my own mind, body and nature.