Self
Sports Are Pointless and That’s the Point
The true value of activities are in the bond they enable.
I’m a child of the water. The smell of chlorine induces nostalgia and the sensation of liquid engulfing my body feels as natural as breathing. This is a consequence of growing up in Florida, where swim lessons were an inevitability and swim team was the natural extension of that.
Swimming laps gives you ample time to contemplate. There’s little else to do, and thinking becomes a welcome form of escapism. And even in those early days of practice, I remember feeling the water flow past my face, and the sound of bubbles drowning everything out, and thinking, “Why am I going back and forth all day. What even is the point?”
Yes, I understood implicitly that this was part of training. But stepping back, it all felt so silly, like I was caught in an aquatic infinity loop. If I were swimming to escape something? Sure. Or to get across a river? Great. But down and back and down and back? It felt so pointless.
This logic isn’t unique to swimming. In basketball, bounce a ball up and down the court, throwing it into a basket, only to do it again. In golf, you spend hours just walking, occasionally hitting a ball with weird stick — and for what? Just write down your score and brag…
