This Vine of a bouncing lamb is what it’s all about

We are not baby lambs. We are people, and while we also live indoors -- as people do, and as baby lambs generally do not -- we carry weight and worry that baby lambs do not. This is more or less what we call life, the process of picking up and putting down the various burdens that we must bear from one place to another, and from home and back.

That is not all of it, blessedly. There are also all the things that lighten and brighten and help, but also there are times when all of it is so heavy and shifting on our backs. Where we walked, we now plod. Where we stood up and felt the sun on our faces, we stoop in shadow. The only thing to do is carry it, of course, towards where we are going. And so we carry it, and that is our ultimate dignifying act and also the only thing to do, but there is no sense in pretending that it is not heavy.

Sports, at their purest and best, are one of those leavening and lifting things. They are a way up and out, to the thrill of movement in the playing and onto a meditative awe that opens us up in the watching. They are whatever it is this ostrich is doing while running in traffic, but also whatever that ostrich is feeling while doing it. They are why this lamb makes this sound, and also the sound it makes. Sports call our name and we come bounding down the hall, taking bigger leaps than are necessary or frankly practical. We get there in the least efficient and happiest way possible, because we are lighter, now, having heard the call. We bound because we can barely stay on the ground at all.

Sports makes baby lambs out of us, when it’s all working right. We are called, and we come, clopping and sliding, closer and closer to sports and further from the ground, weightless.

So yes, I personally think this baby lamb -- about which you can learn more at Buzzfeed, naturally -- qualifies as sports in several ways.

h/t to Jordan Sargent