Wednesday, January 4, 2006

Ice Ice Baby

Canada being a cold climate country and the best ice hockey nation in the world, I always felt compelled to learn how to ice skate growing up, so recently I took the initiative to purchase ice skates and learn to ice skate.

It has been more difficult that I had expected, the depressing part of learning to ice skate is seeing the four-year old kid speed by me or pretend to crash into me, causing me to stumble. As I watched this four-year old kid smirk at me, I had a thought provoking moment.
Why couldn't my parents take me to ice skate at his age ?
My parents answered that they were too busy. Parents are always too busy to help their kids when it comes to doing physical activity. If I needed to go the library, my mom would drop the roti, and drive me to the library in a heartbeat.

Growing up in school, I noticed that Muslims rarely play at the top level in sports (excluding cricket). It seems parents put a lot of pressure on their kids to get a good education, never really allowing them to participate in sports or help them live an active lifestyle. This is partly due to the fact that our parents never really lived the healthy lifestyle. Although, the evening walk among our parents is common, I don't think it counts as being active growing up.

As the Olympics approach and we watch these athletes compete at a high-level, I just hope that there are more parents out there who will let their kids pursue sports or promote an active lifestyle. There are other ways to make a living in this world other than becoming a doctor, lawyer or teacher.

3 comments:

Ali said...

There are other ways to make a living in this world other than becoming a doctor, lawyer or teacher.

Yeah, they are becoming an engineer, a computer science related professional or a pharmacist. Didn't you know?

Ozair said...

Ali, Oh yes, I forgot to mention the engineer and pharmacist profession, but recently I have found being in a Computer Science related professional is not getting the props it once did in the uncle scene, although I really don't care, but that is the latest buzz ;-)

I agree with you Omar that playing sport professionally is competitive and a difficult way to make a living. I guess the point I was trying to make is that kids growing up should participate in activities such as soccer, taekwondo, or even thai-boxing. Not many will be able to play professionaly, but atleast they have this habit of an active lifestyle.

In the summer, I rarely see kids playing outside anymore; they are all inside surfing the Web or playing video games. If kids continue to grow up with this lifestyle, we can expect to pay more taxes to support our rising health costs.

-Hasan said...

...they are all inside surfing the Web or playing video games.

reminds me of that TV commercial where the mom is yelling at her kids to play their video game or else they won't get dinner. aparently it's some educational system.

nevertheless, kids, and people in general are getting more cushioned and leading increasingly inactive lives. i don't know how many works i have read and watched pertaining to this matter, it seems like there is some new study or finding almost everyday. plus you can see it on the streets everywhere.

this is a huge generalization of the issue, but i would definitely say part of the problem is that when it comes to attaining success, goodness and ethical values are no longer of enough importance.