"Life is for living and living is free" goes a verse in a well-known oldie hit.
But what happens if you are not fulfilled by your own life, and instead of making efforts to improve it, you replace what's not working with partial surrogates?
There's an easy, but so wrong fix. You pretend to live the life of a soap opera or novel character, you identify with the life of a diva or a very successful individual, you live through the successes and failures of your sport's idol.
Ignoring the fictional soap operas and novels, all of the above usually got to where they are after many years of incredible determination, focus, hard work and repeated failures and successes.
"No pain, no gain" says the adage, without referring necessarily to physical pain.
It's one thing to have an idol and to want to follow his or her footsteps, if possible (although I believe everyone has their own path), it's another to put your own life on hold and live your idol's.
When you live life through idols, you cheat, and you cheat big time. You have a kill switch or an on and off switch, which your idol doesn't have and never had.
Now, your idol is doing this awesome electrifying concert or takes an award, so, yup, it's a perfect time to switch it on. It feels great!
But then he or she is stalked by paparazzi, disguises to get out of the house unrecognized (and still a wise-ass blows his or her cover), or works tirelessly without releasing any hit. Hey, now it's so fun, better switch this off!
If the idol is a sportsman/woman. Game is on...
Version A: Your idol rules, is the king/queen of the world! Yep, nice to be in his/her shoes!
Version B: Your idol sucks and the game is not going well at all, murmurs, even "boos" from the stands. If you're there in the stands, what are you doing? Cheer or boo? If you're in front of the TV, do you change the channel, turn the TV off or stick around? Anyway, it sucks to be him/her right then, so maybe next game.
And of course, that's only what we see. Do you practice with your idol (or as he/she does)? Do you eat the way he/she does? Do you keep all those restrictions? What about earlier in life? What about the possibility that your idol could have been just another one of the many who don't make it? Can you cope with this possibility? Are you willing to do what it takes to be among the best?
As fans, we don't have to do what our favorites do, but still share the sweet joy of victory and the sadness of defeat. But yet again, we don't/shouldn't live through the lives of our favorites, merely be there when they need us, for better or worse.
If you have an idol, you can't play "pretend" or be merely a fan. To follow the footsteps of your idol, you have to do all this daily grind work, which will never be glamorous, regardless of the domain. But some day, there's a tiny chance that you might be someone else's idol.