Flag raised, Yellow card! The things we do in the dark
by Imane Fawzy Nofal
In a soccer game, whenever an attacker sneaks into the goal area un-flanked by an opponent, he immediately gets the whistle for being offside and his goal, if scored is canceled. It took me about 22 years to understand the football (soccer) offside rule —maybe because I didn’t love the game that much or failed to try hard enough. I now understand that when a player finds himself nearer to the other team’s goal post area than both the ball and an opponent player, it’s a foul.
As one who likes to study things and look beyond the rules, I believe that FIFA did not just come up with the offside rule haphazardly. It had to mean something. And, since FIFA advocates fair play, I can only conclude that the offside foul was meant to avoid sneaking. Sneaking is a sin in the world of football!
Isn’t this same in real life? Simply put, secretively snooping around in darkness, fearing others will see you or know what you are doing is almost always wrong. Skulks (i.e. those who hide, lurk, or practice evasion) in life are also damned.
Like that sleek attacker on the soccer field, it is not uncommon for me to sneak into the kitchen after my twins have gone to bed to enjoy those “forbidden” delights such as Pepsi, Lay’s chips, chocolate and candy that I keep hidden from them. Unfortunately, this is what I do: I ban things which I deem harmful to my kids, but then I allow myself the freedom of indulging in them every now and then. My intentions are good; the application of them however, is flawed. Ideally, we should be role models for our children, shouldn’t we?
I believe sneaking reflects our fears of facing ourselves, let alone the world. It makes us cowards. You don’t necessarily have to be a thief or a soccer player to experience the offside foul. Whatever you do ‘in the dark’ should be questioned by you. Think of a bad habit you once had, like smoking cigarettes, that you hid from your dad; gossiping about a “friend”; a show you watched behind your parents’ backs … etc.
You might have your justifications for doing these things in the dark and you may be right, but in the end, we all should know that whatever we do in the shadows only means that we don’t have the courage to come out in the open and express our true thoughts and feelings.
Imane blogs at Express It 2 Live It
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