Our athletic club is great for the development of health, fitness, and quality of life, but how do we get the message across to those friends out there who would benefit by joining us? The following story I adapted from an e-book by Danish author Søren Kierkegaard, called "Provocations". (click to link to the website).
Every time wild geese go on their amazing migratory journey, they fly along, not too far above ground, and call out to any geese on the ground to join them in their flight.
When the flight of the wild geese is heard in the air and there are tame geese down on the ground, the tame geese are instantly aware of it and to a certain degree they understand what it means. Some of them even start to run along, beating their wings, cry out in awkward, confused disorder – but they are just mimicking the flying birds, they never lift off.
There was once a wild goose. In the autumn, about the time for migration, it became aware of some tame geese. It thought it a shame to fly away from them, and hoped to win them over so that they would decide to go along with it on the flight. It tried to entice them to rise a little higher and then again a little higher in their flight, that they might, if possible, accompany it in the flight, saved from the wretched, mediocre life of waddling around on the earth as respectable, tame geese.
At first, the tame geese thought it very entertaining and liked the wild goose. But soon they became tired of it, and drove it away with sharp words, censuring it as a visionary fool devoid of experience and wisdom.
In a certain sense there was something admirable about what the wild goose wanted. Nevertheless, it was a mistake, for a tame goose never becomes a wild goose, but a wild goose can certainly become a tame goose. If what the wild goose tried to do is to be commended in any way, then it must above all watch out for one thing – that it itself become like the tame geese. As soon as it notices that the tame geese have any kind of power over it, then away, away in migratory flight.
Our sport is not exactly like this. True, an athlete who is fit and healthy and full of life is as different from the ordinary person as the wild goose is from the tame goose. But for us, there is always hope that a tame goose might become a wild goose.
So if anyone says you are silly and undignified because you are still playing outdoor sport “at your time of life”, you know what to tell them. You are a wild goose and you are proud of it. Resist the temptation to sink back into “wretched mediocrity”!
Fly goose fly!
