Do not just, live it
Along with the beginning of summer and the nice weather, even the mood is cheered up. Mostly for workout-lovers, summer is that moment of big sport events, finals and vacation time: the best moment to party. But since lockdown and social distancing have cancelled summer Olympiads and UEFA Euro, it’s getting harder to face the uncertainty of these days on a sportive side. With frozen competitions and gym memberships, this summer expectations look kind of betrayed. But you don’t just do sport. You talk about it, you watch it, you live it. It’s a 360 degree experience interacting with people. Sport satisfies a global desire that has grown exponentially with COVID-19 pandemia: a desire to be happy.
How many anti-sport individuals, among us students, have ever asked what’s so attracting about physical effort, about sweating while doing sport? How many of us can’t understand the desire of working out now, especially with tests behind the corner… The truth is, nobody is forcing us to work out a little as nobody is forcing us to study and really keeping up with classes with the camera turned off. And yet still many of us need this. But again, why? Is that a moral obligation? Or is there anything more?
It’s proven that endorphins released right after a workout, also trigger a strong positive feeling in our body. Waking up with a quick workout it’s indeed recommended, right because it helps to stay energized throughout the day. Boosts your happiness and increases your mood. So physical activity really helps to feel better but…what does that mean exactly?
Wellness: “it is the emotional, mental, physical, social and spiritual stadium that allows people to reach and maintain their personal potential in society.” Dictionaries always give me that little gulp. Isn’t it the reason why everyone now puts everything on the stake at the campus? Isn’t it what we all dream of, once graduated? Once at work? Being able to reach and express our personal potential in our society. Being a student in 2020 is that what it means to me: set my goals, grow my potential, put everything on the stake and more, feeling alive… Best thing is to realize that I can see all this with an environment that- despite life hard times- is the opportunity to give us a try: try to live this way. In and off class, inside the evolving campus, equipped to help us watching things differently. Starting from ourselves. The sport center Giuriati near Leonardo, the project of Gasometri’s park near Bovisa, interventions and sport events that Politecnico is developing, are a real gift for us students, beyond these hard times. The goal is found our brains and grow our body. Supporting Education, there is the invitation to be involved in sport activities, to help us grow tonic and strong, enough to face a crazy and competitive routine like ours, weather it be in a workplace, during family time or social life. Through these projects Politecnico is helping us to choose how to spend our free-time. Starting with our Education now, looking forward to a professional experience in the future. As a student is good to understand I live in a place where this is the focus! Sometimes it’s too chaotic outside to remember we study right because we decided to dedicate this time to ourselves. Otherwise it is too easy to complain. The message is that physical activity is essential to personal growth too. It is not just playing. Enough with the thing that “this is just a game”. For the human being sport has been always more than just physical activity, more than just a hobby, and far from being just a meaningless, empty fun. Sport reached every corner of the world, beyond culture and race. So what’s left to be said to us, Politecnico students? What makes our Politecnico the place where we can grow up our self-care not just in a mental way but also in a physical one? But mostly, what does it has to do with our Happiness?
The fact is that at the end, our schooling is not so different from the path of an athlete. Let’s think about it. Engagement, tears, sweat and effort… all just to find happiness or at least just to try to be happy. The parallelism “Student-Athlete” doesn’t seem so absurd if we just think about professional figures that want to shape the courses that we chose to study. In these two months, we had the chance to really see that Politecnico is shaped by people that don’t complain for all this situation but instead they are trying to figure out some solutions. We as students are studying for this, we are studying to create something new! And if you focus on it, the history of sport teaches us that is in these moment of difficulties, like the ones we are now living, that we have to find what is hidden in ourselves, we have to challenge ourselves in order to give more to people like us. Maybe we have to do it in a different way than before, maybe we have to slow down sometimes, but what is clear is that we have to stay always operative as before. Who is used to study hard as who is used to train, in this moment of crisis is the representation of that part of society that really can slow down, that can lower the speed without ever stopping. That part of society that doesn’t lose the consciousness that they need to set up on them, and that is living this moment as a chance to be a support for all the ones with whom they have the opportunity to share places and time together, at the campus or at work, facing exams and challenges. Sport also during Covid-19 time keeps pushing us to do better, keeps pushing us to be there for everyone. As what is happening with our distance teaching. As an extra gear for ourselves. As a chance for oneself. Mostly thanks to the new challenges that we are facing everyday.
So here it is what I find really beautiful here where I am right now: a chance to be happy.