For many people, life, and indeed sport, is a paradox.
By that we mean that life (or maybe more significantly, sport) seems to be filled with seemingly absurd and contradictory statements and events which, for all their absurdity, are in fact true.
Such paradoxes includepeople who cannot trust, cannot be trusted.
The more you try to impress people, the less impressed they will be.
The more you fail, the more likely you are to succeed (consider Icarus).
The more you learn, the more you realize how little you know.
The more choices you have, the less satisfied you are with each one.
The only certainty is that nothing is ever certain. The only constant is change.
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The thing we fear most is the thing we need to do most.
We have to slow down (in other words, rest) in order to speed up. Stop looking in order to find what you are looking for.
The more you give, the more you receive.The more connections we have, the less connected we are.
There are other interesting and amusing ones.
One might be the famous saying that “Youth is wasted on the young” or similarly, from Oscar Wilde, “I am not young enough to know everything”.
We are told we should “fight fire with fire”.
Most tellingly, the biggest paradox could be saying "This statement is false"; if the statement is true, then it must be false. But if it is false, then it must be true. Confused?
Having considered paradoxes, maybe we might also throw in some oxymorons, which, in case we have forgotten from our school English classes, is “a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction”.
Again, examples of this include regular phrases like a deafening silence, organised chaos, old news, acting naturally, clearly confused, same difference, successful failure, bittersweet, only choice – and the list goes on.
All of the above may come to mind when we consider another phrase often stated with reference to what is needed for a pursuit of sporting achievements – namely, heart and hustle.
Heart and hustle is what setsplayers apart, it is argued.
Heart has pure connotations; hustle often has negative, secretive, almost criminal and illicit undertones.
Heart, with reference to sport, is all about belief, passion, delight, commitment and love of the sport.
Hustle speaks of energy, force, any means of achieving the desired goal.
Heart has art in it; hustle is more the science. So, if we put the two together, it is defined as “To have the courage, confidence, self-belief, and self-determination to go out there and work it out until the opportunities wanted in life are found”.
It is about taking risks; it is “unwavering determination and relentless pursuit of a dream”.
Heart will only take a player so far; hustle will take the player all the way.
Why then is this so important for children to learn and why is it so hard – apart from the fact that the more you learn, the more you realise there is to learn?
We need to use paradox and oxymorons in our sport; we need to have both heart and hustle, faith and works.
Nothing will come easily to any sportsperson, by the very fact that sport is competitive and everyone else who is playing is showing plenty of evidence of heart, not to mention hustle.
Nothing will come easily to anyone.
We might wish to argue that the only certainty is that no victory is ever certain.
The only constant is that results will change. The more we fail in sport, the more likely we are to succeed, if we have heart and hustle.
What we need to have, others also want. Competitors will fight fire with fire, passion with passion, heart with heart, hustle with hustle.
So, we may do well to consider whether all the above statements are true or false?
Are they examples of paradox or oxymoron, though perhaps we might call ita paradoxymoron?
If we took the last two syllables of that word we may well have discovered the word some would use to describe anyone who has suggested the above.
Are we not young enough to understand this? Perhaps it is all old news.
Whatever it is, and in whatever position paradox and oxymoron play on the pitch, we need to see our children letting their heart move them and their hustle energise them so that their failures can become their successes and their chaos can find some order.
We need to trust them to achieve that.
As the old song goes, let us move it, move it, move it.
Heart and hustle.
