So who are your teams?
Mine were the Yankees, Cowboys, Celtics and the Islanders. Hmmmm, I can feel your judgment.
Even if you hate sports, you still have teams…
Ford or Chevy or Toyota…
Verizon or AT&T or Sprint or T-Mobile…
And now that we are adults, our teams play for keeps.
Democrat or Republican or MAGA…
Conservative or Liberal or Moderate…
Man or Woman…American or not American…
Us versus them.
In our games, winners take all the glory…and the losers are resigned to the scrap heap of history.
In real life, the winners earn more than they can ever use and the losers wind up carrying a sign on the off ramp of life…marginalized and forgotten.
Yet have you ever really thought about what separates the winners from the losers?
Once you think past the ego based answers: talent, intelligence, willingness to work hard…You start to realize how things well beyond your control are more important: the family & country of your birth, who you know, being in the right place at the right time, random luck, etc.
So as we sip our high-quality beverage of choice, consider how easily our good fortune could have been different. And if it was different, how comfortable we were enjoying our good fortune without a thought about the people who weren’t as lucky.
Yes, we were taught to live by the games we play. Yet aren’t we all more than these uniforms we wear? Are any of our successes really by our efforts alone? Do we have no experiences where our personal satisfaction does not come at the expense of someone’s degradation?
Winning is a hollow victory based on a false choice: win or lose.
Life offers a third option…fulfillment, which is only possible when no one loses.
