The most shocking thing I have learned from the documentary Not Just a Game is that NFL players have
an average 20 year shorter life span. How can these men agree to a career that destroys their bodies
and even their quality of life down the road. I came across this video below
and it had a good point, how much is your life worth?
According to the documentary the average players career is three years. These men sacrifice the risk of losing their life or shortening it all for only three years. Yes they make a lot of money in that time period, but is that really worth it. Now I know it is the experience of a lifetime and only so many players ever make it to the big leagues. Although the idea to me seems archaic I can see how some would die for
the chance to do what these players do every time they walk on the
field. In the video they say that deceased soldiers families get 500,000 dollars. Does that mean a soldiers life is worth that? Then I thought about the amount of risky things people do everyday that they could die from yet they still participate in it. So what really is the value of a life. Most would say priceless yet we are constantly putting a price on it.Oscar Wild wrote, to live is the rarest thing in the world, most people just exist. When players walk on the field they are living life to the fullest.
“Most would say [life is] priceless yet we are constantly putting a price on it.” I totally agree with you here. People are always worrying about how other people are spending their time and whether they're doing it the “right” way, while not considering that everyone is different. What is valuable to one person may not be valuable to another. Value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
ReplyDeleteBut since value is arbitrary, who’s to say what it is? I would say every individual. There will always be social contexts to base one’s judgment on, and those can definitely come in handy. Everyone wants to feel accepted in his or her society, and if people have to conform to some standards to be accepted, so be it. But it’s dangerous when people conform so much that they lose their true sense of self. And that’s why I argue against the idea of one strict value on life and how to live it.
Of course it makes me sad when I think someone is wasting his or her time when he or she could be "living life to the fullest"--but why do I get to say how that person should live his or her life? I don’t, so I shouldn’t try. The people I’m disagreeing with may very well feel they are living their lives to the fullest. I think it's an interesting thing to think about. And I also think it's important, because once people realize that everyone views life in their own terms, they become less judgmental. It’s hard to judge someone once you think of him or her as having equal rights as you. And we each know WE should be allowed to make our own decisions about what to do with our lives! Why not apply that idea to others? Amazing things could happen if everyone got to that place.