It`s late.

I`m enjoying some wine

on my balcony after a great session of physical exercise. It`s not easy keeping the hope alive and the physical form even more so. Anyway, it`s good keeping yourself busy when still alive.
Apparently exercising not only develops your body, but it contributes also to a better brain functioning. Can you guess what potential do the football players have?
Else, nothing happened. Everyone exercised alone and we`ve been together only in having watched, also alone, same Super Rugby Aotearoa games. Dynamic plays, extraordinary… with fans in the stands.
I do not know your routine, but if since March you had an excuse not to join us and run among the Harlequins, I guess that now when school started you could familiarize yourself with (this) sport tough books!

Dan Carter – My story, by Duncan Greive

It presents the life of an athlete, a rugby player, starting with the perspective of a younger with no worries or financial education till the desire to reconquer the World Cup. There are also described events that show how much important it is to have some habits that will make you overcome a failure, which allow the tension to go off, how he worked on what he liked trying to improve the outcomes without focusing on the result. The process is more important than the result and focusing on the latter alone might disappoint you, make you feel some kind of emptiness when this is surpassed either by achieving or missing it. It might be in opposition with what you hear in public and at the workplace where the result is pretty often mentioned. Try to analyze your preparation for a sports event you`re taking part in. It`s much fun than the contest alone. I liked the interview of Thomas Muller after Bayern – Barcelona (8 – 2!) although the Bavarians were pretty much interested in the result (but maybe we`re missing the bigger picture here).

Playing the Enemy, by John Carlin

Half of the book describes the efforts made by Nelson Mandela during jail time in order to establish democracy in South Africa using other means that the ones that got him there in the first place. The rules described in “How to win friends and influence people” written by Dale Carneige are perfectly applied. His routine was interesting: we woke up every morning at 4:30, exercised for an hour and had an easy nutrition. Otherwise, the days there created some mental space which allowed the creation of the approach to the political situation right after his release. Rugby, the opium of the local white men and a symbol of Apartheid, becomes the element that brings peacefully together for the first time all races in South Africa. It gets more tense as the story approaches 24 th June 1995.

Without getting into politics, this fact has to be reminded: it is interesting how sports are used like a lever in order to gain human rights and correct social injustices. Check also the boycott of the 1968 Olympics undertaken by black athletes. There are even more such examples. Usually, sports have been and still are a vector that makes possible people integration and which still create communities. Maybe when physical distancing won`t be required anymore, the facts show that you should join such a community. It`s great.