Sport and Peacefulness

I just came home from a morning of sport.  Playing, not watching.  A warm-up session for a team sport, which is a competition, involving among other things guile and deception, the struggle to gain and control territory, and the final goal of defeating your opponent (all with a playful spirit, of course).

Aside from being good for the physical body (apparently the lymph system gets stimulated, which helps remove toxins from your system) sport is pleasant; it gets me associating with others; it gets me out in the sunshine.

But as I left the grid iron, the question arose:  does sport support peacefulness?  Certainly it took me out of my head, and moved some rather stale energy.  But is putting juice into an arena which by definition pits one person against another helping to increase the sum total of peace in the world?

Compare to this:  giving a healing massage to another person.  Or this:  sitting silently on a park bench, beside a friend, holding hands, feeling a cool breeze on your skin.

Of the tens of thousands of ways one can spend their time, why compete when one can melt?

Here's why: to get what I need, plus a little bit more.  It is true.  But is that where I stop competing?  Or do I push for more?

I notice myself greeted with choices each moment.  I notice myself addressing them: with brain, with heart (with luck, with Being).  I notice I know not what to do.

And then, with forever limited information, I choose.