baseball

Coaching Spirit

Scott McPhersonLeave a comment

Here’s one that’s likely to hit you in the feels.

While the media can be really focused on money and status and achievement, in the end we all know that what really makes something impressive is their capacity for empathy, connection, forgiveness and love. People pulling together is always more meaningful than a solitary achievement. The story about the sacrifices of parenting are generally more poignant than any tale of personal victory.

Despite what we claim to value, a great deal of young children are taught to approach sports more like career training, when its most valuable contribution to each player and to society is that it teaches teamwork. It clearly demonstrates the value of chaining human capacity together to accomplish something bigger than any individual could achieve. In this way it is a beautiful metaphor for living.

The truth is, we don’t want enlightenment as much as we think we do. It’s pretty boring. It’s hard to feel something when we feel everything. And then we can’t even share an experience because we are both the experience and the experiencer. In Oneness we are ourselves and everyone else. In Oneness there’s no one to hang out with. Hence the strange dilemma of life.

Imagine the universe using its infinite power to create duality, and opposition, and drama and –bingo! Suddenly we’re all invested and interested in this drama called life. In a strange way, we chose the dramas we experience in life. Nowhere is our use of this opportunity exemplified more than in most sports.

Every sports fan begins each season with the odds stacked against them. Maybe 30+ teams are vying for one championship. 97% of us are essentially signing up for the agony of defeat.

With pro sports we volunteer to participate in a giant public drama where our agony may end up on full public display –we’ll even have uniforms. And every year we take that risk again and again just for that slim chance that maybe our team will do it this year. It’s a beautiful example of people ignoring odds in order to create happiness –for at least a while.

Despite being disappointed for 50 straight years, Toronto hockey fans still line up to buy tickets and every year they are filled with equal excitement. What else would enlightenment look like other than a group of people being thrilled to participate in something they can almost be guaranteed will end in an agonizing drama?

Every league in the world is filled with people happy to sign up for likely failure. So if we can do that with a sport, why’s it so hard with our life?

The truth is, we just want a little bit of enlightenment. Just enough to take the pain away–we think. But then someone explains that to get rid of the pain we must accept the pain. We must become one with our pain. At that point it’s not an obstacle, it’s an experience and we can survive those, easy. It’s what every losing sports fan has to do every time they lose.

As Sam Houston State coach Matt Deggs so nicely puts it, rather than full enlightenment, we want the drama. Because in the heat of that, what we really enjoy is the joy of coming together. We naturally enjoy connection and communion more than the tearing apart and division, and this is how even a losing team can generate a winning experience. Because we can’t really enact enlightenment alone. It needs us to work together.

Sports fields, workplaces, and within our own families, this sort of deep connection and appreciation can exist in all kinds of places. All it needs is a few open people who are prepared to open up, be vulnerable, and love regardless of the setting or the outcome.

The question now is, are we one of those people? And if so, where will we share love today?

peace. s

Winners and Losers

Scott McPhersonLeave a comment

698 Relax and Succeed - What you get by achieving

Sports and games are good examples of how comfortable human beings can actually be with the idea of suffering. We volunteer to play or watch both with the full knowledge that both contexts require a winner and therefore at least one loser as well.

Even if we’re confident, we happily enter the game or field of play at least subliminally aware that we could be volunteering to suffer. In fact, that potential price is what gives the victories their highs. First we volunteer for genuinely challenging competition, and then we play to achieve a weird sort of relief from a risk we ironically chose to take.

I live near a school and during a recent break from some yard work I made a cup of tea and watched part of a junior high Phys Ed baseball game. That game is still going on, but watching it inspired me to write this, so now I’m seeing it out my office window.

It’s important that it’s Phys Ed class too, because the teacher appeared to be quite casual about who was on what team. When that’s the case the kids are not going to have any sort of strong sense of team affiliation. It’ll just be classmates playing baseball. And that’s much different than a team that’s trying to win.

Playing the piano is not the same as playing the piano to win an international competition, or a scholarship or anything where you can win or lose. You can’t lose at playing, but you can lose status, marks, money, scholarships etc.

In a team sport this alters things considerably. People get competitive and they do things they otherwise wouldn’t. But in the Phys Ed. game the kids were all pretty encouraging of one another. They didn’t care who was on what team. They cared about whether or not their friends did well. So you would see cheers from the opposing teams on a good hit. It was very bubbly and happy and supportive.

698 Relax and Succeed - Success consists of going from failure

The close camaraderie and unison that is derived from that game is a part of life that is too-often undervalued. Because we can’t buy relaxation or free time, we can just rent places to do it or buy things to encourage it.

Relaxation is a verb, so like eating lunch or becoming Enlightened it’s not something that someone else can do for us. We have to relax to achieve it and the kind of play those kids were engaged in is a great way to do that with others. We just can’t have a personal objective. Or as a Buddhist would put it: have no attachments.

This is not to say the world of competition and that sweet sense of victory does not have its place in this world. It’s incredibly valuable. It drives much of our personal and societal success. It includes people’s dreams of having their own restaurant, but it’s also the Olympics and the Oscars. It’s us trying to get a scholarship or even beating a sibling in a race for the good seat in the car. Competition can bring joy in the right context.

Business, contests, family rules; those are really just systems and humans live inside them. So it’s best to understand them and use them to our advantage so we can enjoy a life with a lot of winning in it. But that will not seem like much of a life unless we also learn to play. Because winning happens outside of us and play is something we feel inside of us. And that’s the difference between pleasure for our ego versus nourishment for our souls.

When kids aren’t on a team they have no motivation to yell for another kid to run faster, or to hope one trips and falls. They have no reason to express disappointment if they strike out. They have no reason to taunt each other.

Done right these things can be fun and they’re an excellent metaphor for life. But as with our work and our dating and our conversations, we should maintain an awareness of our State of Mind; are we trying to win or are we trying to enjoy our lives?

People who focus too much on winning end up being things like workaholics. And people who do that with love become serial daters. And the people who do that in conversation become tiresome. Winning creates losers and sometimes that’s what we want from life. But at the same time, simple noncompetitive play also has value. Let’s not forget play.

698 Relax and Succeed - Anything I can not transformLet’s move through our days with a mind toward monitoring our objectives. We should ask ourselves directly, are these actions intended to bring me happiness or bring me victory? Because there’s very few fights between couples that truly matter in the larger scheme of things so winning is quite hollow.

With happiness we start to feel it the moment we drop the need to win. It is the desire for those outside objectives—those ego-pursuits—that will lead us to surrender our happiness in the present moment. We must do our best to stay as conscious as we can. We can play and win, but we can’t let the need to win lead us to only compete —for without any play, we’ll have already lost before you’ve even started the game.

Now let’s have ourselves a wonderful day.

peace. s

Understanding Sports Fans

Scott McPhersonLeave a comment

Through the links you’ve shared on your blog I’ve begun to listen to a lot of the same CBC radio programs you sometimes refer to. One of those very programs recently had quite an interesting documentary on the psychology behind being a fan of a sports team. I am not really a big sports guy but the documentary was excellent except that I do not feel that it succeeded at truly explaining the psychology behind what I would call the truly rabid sports fan. Watching people reacting to the Olympics exposes the fact that this behaviour seems almost primitive to me. My hope is that you can provide me with more positive ways to
look at the antics of some of these people who otherwise look slightly insane from my perspective. Thank you very much Scott. I appreciate your assistance on this matter.

signed,
Confused by Sports

Dear Confused,

Thanks for the question. Hey, you’re from Jamaica or Guyana or somewhere in that region, aren’t you? If I guessed right then I’m pretty sure you know what group of accents I’m talking about. They’re all quite unique, but they have certain qualities in common. You guys mix the precision of proper English speech with a reggae meter—I absolutely love your writing. Sorry—I digress. I love accents and words and anything “languagey.”

325 Relax and Succeed - Shout out to the loversYes—I heard part of the documentary you’re referring to. It was on the program Ideas, on CBC One—one of my favourites. It was very interesting and well done, but I didn’t hear all of it so I don’t know what sort of explanations they provided. Regardless, I can definitely find something very positive in the behaviour of sports fans for you.

The basis of the documentary’s premise was: why do people volunteer to be fans of teams even though on average they’ll lose and suffer about 50% or more of the time? (A lot more in some cities… ahem… o.0) Because this idea was at the core of the premise of the show I’m going to presume that’s the part you didn’t feel was explained. I’m glad you asked, because after considering it for a while I came to realize that it’s actually as heartwarming as it is interesting.

To start with let’s consider our nature. Before we lived alone or in very small groups in houses, we were collections of people. We were tribes and clans and bands. We were together. 80% of the world still group sleeps. Before that we were somehow contained in the unified, ethereal energy of the universe. We were united in our Oneness. And there are aspects of us that know and remember that. It’s just our conscious minds keep blabbing about our separateness so we can’t hear our own knowing. (If this all seems too abstract, stick with me.)

People pair off. They have friends. The vast majority would rather work in groups, people consider loneliness something unpleasant, and around the world solitary confinement is the worst possible prison to be in. So we naturally fit together. We’re a pack animal. But in a world with no packs—in a world with no tribes or clans, we opt instead for teams. We voluntarily 325 Relax and Succeed - Life is like a roller coastercombine our interests with those of others. And why? In the hopes of winning? Maybe our egos think that. But the centre of us—the part that’s still plugged in—knows that we’re not there to win—we’re there to play.

In the confines of the arena of play we will very informatively allow and surrender to the vagaries of sports. We’ll love it even though the outfield is uneven, or the court is slippery, or there’s the uncertainty of injuries etc. It is so easy for a good guy to lose—but that’s precisely what makes it exciting. Like we do with movies we choose to engage in a roller coaster ride. We ride the downs because we accept that they are a fundamental aspect of the ups. Andy Kaufman knew that the more you hated his character the happier you would be when he got beat up (The Man In the Moon). The fact that we volunteer for those experiences represents an enormous lesson if we choose to meditate on it closely.

Now, can an ego get this all muddled? Absolutely. They won’t be participating in this spiritual way, they will be participating in an egotistical one. They won’t want an exciting interesting game, they’ll want to win. They won’t want to share your pain, they’ll want to unload all of theirs onto you. They will feel separate and in opposition. For them the game is a mask—an excuse to indulge in tantrums. For the average person and the spiritually wise alike, fandom is merely a form of remembrance of who we really are and that’s why it feels so invigorating to us no matter what direction things are going. Whether we are cheering happily together or wailing in agony, the point is that it’s a collective experience. That’s what we like about it.  Not the winning or losing.

This surrender into co-experience allows us to join and meld with others. We melt into stupendous cheers, we get chills up our spines together, we become one with the entire experience. We forget there is an us. We do not use our thoughts to create an ego—instead we are simply Being. This is no small thing. This is why people say things like “we won,” or “I can’t believe how terrible we’re playing.” There is no separation between us and the group. And the 325 Relax and Succeed - Be thankful for the things you don't enjoyathletes themselves are more like the elders around which the tribe convenes. But everyone is an equal part. Everyone feels the sting of defeat and—by contrast—the elation of victory.

This is actually an excellent lesson in what enlightenment truly is. Enlightenment is not being happy all the time. Enlightenment is being okay with anything. Even death. Because the real you knows that this game goes on long after time appears to run out. So actually comprehend the fact that you choose to suffer when you engage as fan. But because you chose it with your free will you have no resistant thoughts and the result is that you enjoy the experience not for its result, but for the experience itself. Because your spirit is not an ego. An ego does things, but a spirit has experiences. And as long as the experiences are intense and amazing and rewarding then you’ve done the only kind of winning that anyone can ever really do. Have fun playing. 😉

peace. Scott “Slap-Shot” McPherson 😉

PS Here’s the link to the documentary if anyone’s interested:

A CBC Ideas Documentary on Sports Fans: Catching the Game