Trapped In A Game

I have always loved football from the day I first trapped one. Trapping the ball made me feel like a conqueror. Stepping on it with your fists on your waist, like a hero when he is afoot on a troll's fell head. Football for me was always this part of my life where I felt that I need to dominate. This need for control seeped to all other aspects that I hold with seriousness. Academics and co-curricular activities are the theaters where I also wanted my voice the loudest, my presence under the spotlight. But, growing older, seeing and tasting things, feelings rather strange and obscure from my childhood made me realize that I haven't done things right with. Football, I am sorry. I should have treated you as my art, playing you with the feel of a painter, the eye of a sculptor, the ear of a violinist, the baton of a conductor. I should have studied with the goal of learning, asking questions and asking even more. I shouldn't have memorized and took notes than having listened and realized. I should have been the artist-scholar: slow to argue but quick to understand. I should have wrote with the passion of a life-long learner of the guitar. Each word I plucked from the wisdom of the divine. I should have lead with much courage than the general on the hill sitting out the bloodshed of his men. Should have and shouldn't haves. Wasted moments. I will, is what I should be saying today. I am, is what I should be saying in the past. I have done right with, is what I will be saying in the future. Oh how I should have kicked the ball. Maybe, I would have become a great striker by now.