WE HAVE TO TALK ABOUT COMPETITION
Sport is a microcosm of society. It's also a magnifier at the same time. So when we say sport reflects what goes on in society, we’d be right, and a lot of what goes on in society is not so wholesome. It's not very good. It's exclusionary. The tale that wags the dog is sport. We've even built a culture in America, where our sport programs are predicated on high performance activities that limit the opportunities for people to play. It's not open unless, oh, let's all participate in some activity to get healthy or to build relationships or to learn something about ourselves and to develop character. No, it's like how good are you? We wanna win and if you're really good, we're gonna eliminate everybody who's not and turn them from participants to spectators. And what matters is the size of the arena. How many fans can fit in? How do we market the sport? How do we promote it? –Lee Ellis [13]
Just with sports teams that take competition too seriously, we live in a society in which our worth, our value as a person, is based on how much we can contribute to the economy. And so,
The social utility of a job is inversely proportional to its salary.
–Frank Dabba-Smith
Canaries, point of discussion: who gets screwed and how? …and why? Focus on the small things.
Education has become coupled with sport. Financially speaking, many universities and large high schools are inseparably bound to their athletic programs. While this has advantage, it is remains a problematic relationship. Today, both sport and education are both, somehow, all about winning.
How do [schools] get fundraising and use sport as the vehicle to do that? In the process of doing this, we've set up a structure of basically these cards that are all leaning up against each other on a very fragile foundation. And Covid pulled a couple of those cards out, and now you've got, at least in our country [U.S.A.], you've got educational institutions that are on the precipice of going out of business because their sports programs might not be able to operate this fall. Holy come ole, we've completely messed things up! –Ellis
While this education/sport can of worms is great fodder for our society’s 4th step, I don’t want to get into it here. Just consider that when winning is the thing, we put our own children at risk.
Now, having said all that, sport is probably the most wonderful activity that we could be engaged in if you think about all the ways that it influences us and can influence us in positive, in a positive manner. If coaches decided, for instance, that they weren't autocrats, but they actually servant leaders, that they were doing this because they wanted to—that they wanted to give the athletes the opportunity to grow and develop in the ways that they wanted, how great would that be? But of course, you've got the scoreboard hanging over everything. -Ellis
If sport is indeed a microcosm for society, what might this shift in perspective do for all of us? But then, that scoreboard. All those metrics we strive for, from grades and test scores, to the right name on top of the diploma, from the resumé game (experience required) to the quarterly reports, from credit score to GDP. All those scoreboards have something in common. We think they are telling us when we are winning. I tell you, they are not. They are only indicators that vaguely point to what we actually care about. When we focus too much on the indicators, the metrics, what we care about gets lost in the mud, or stands dejected on the sidelines. We have been following the wrong indicators for too long. We have to learn to see that…in the small things, where it counts.
Some of the things that I'll say will make it sound as if I'm not interested in winning. Are you kidding? I wanna win everything. I'm just not so concerned about the one thing that everyone talks about, which is the scoreboard. I figure the scoreboard will take care of itself if the kids are having fun, if the kids are learning, if the kids are growing and developing their skills in the sport and their skills and relationship with each other, they learn communication and leadership. You know what? The scoreboard takes care of itself. -Ellis
I remember you saying to me one time, you’d gotten into recovery, and you’re doing steps, and AA stuff, and you said to me, “You mean to tell me that if I focus my energies on helping these other people getting sober and helping addicts get into recovery, that my business is gonna get taken care of? Seriously?!?” And then you found that’s exactly what happened. “Yes, great clients started calling me out of the blue. Old clients were making new referrals, and lots of little things were falling into place. I don’t recall making any of that happen, but it did.” –Conversation between myself and Alan G. [13]
When studying and working in education, I saw this happen many times. When teachers did not ‘teach to the test,’ but instead taught as they knew was right—for understanding and for personal and communal development—students usually did better on those tests. Sadly though, in many cases, the fear took over, and the school retreated to the fearful ways of teaching to the test. This speaks to the trust that is called for in Steps 2 & 3. Active trust and ‘doing the next right thing’ really does let the scoreboard take care of itself. Step 4 is when we begin to learn how our fear turns into control. When we’ll do anything do ‘win,’ whatever that may mean at the time. That pathway is slightly different for each of us, and it takes experience, guidance, and insight to see it. The alcoholic knows just how badly seizing control out of fear can go. I wonder, how much of the planet need be destroyed, and how many people have to die for us to see it too?
Canaries, how have you witnessed the ‘scoreboard taking care of itself’?
The war metaphor of sport
Virtue is the attitude that you take when you go into the contest. So is it a war or is it a partnership. -Ellis
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