We’re All Just Stumbling Towards Success

So, I’ve never been a sports kinda guy. Watching or playing sports doesn’t really appeal to me for the most part. But there is one sport that I always loved immensely: volleyball!

I absolutely LOVE volleyball. When we had to play it in gym class in high school, it was the only time I actually tried: I sprinted, dove, got bruised up from hitting the hard gym floor, but I didn’t care. There’s just something about volleyball that I thought was amazing.

This summer, my girlfriend Katie played on a for-fun beach volleyball league. She and a bunch of her friends were on the team. Some were more competitive than others, but they always had fun. After all, it was a league that was just for fun. You paid a fee, got a bunch of people together, then went and played games every Sunday at 6.

This past Sunday was the last game she was playing at, so I went down there to support her. Her team did great! It was the playoffs, and they won 2 games in a row. Good job, guys!

The area where she plays at the beach is an area that is just for volleyball, and it’s sectioned off from the rest of the beach by a low brick wall. There’s 8 courts, I believe, and they were smack-dab in the middle court. So I was sitting at the stands on the sidelines and watching her team by looking past the team playing on the court nearest me.

So, basically, I watched her volleyball game through the dirty-windshield of another volleyball game taking place 20 feet from me. This other game was closer, and easier to watch; but, it didn’t have my friends and girlfriend in it, so it got much less of my attention.

I bring this up because every once in a while, I did watch this closer game. And I later found out from Katie that one of the teams was the first place team.

On the first place team was one guy who seemed to take the sport VERY seriously.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with taking sports seriously. After all, it is something that you enjoy to either play or watch, and it is something that is, by its very nature, competitive. So a fair share of competitive spirit can be expected, or a hell of a lot of competitive spirit if you’re playing on a professional team.

But I had a problem with this one guy from the first place team. I had a problem with him because he seemed to have lost that first part of playing the sport: because it is something that you enjoy.

We’ve all seen people like this guy before: yelling at teammates to either hit or keep away from the ball, yelling “LET IT GO!” in regards to a potentially out-of-bounds volley, clenching fists and spewing obscenities through clenched teeth.

Yet this league was just for fun. It was supposed to be casual. Now, call me crazy, but I don’t generally want to spend my time away from work anywhere where I’d be getting yelled at. Any place where my actions and decisions would be put into a societal electric chair with this guy as the executioner is a place where you won’t find me. And while watching him get annoyed at his friends (I assume they’re friends), I think I discovered why I was annoyed at this guy in the first place: he doesn’t embrace mistakes. He doesn’t accept failure.

To the sports lovers out there, I’m sure this comes across asinine. After all, why on earth would you embrace mistakes and failure when you’re playing a sport?

Well, perhaps because it’s the mistakes and failings that make a sport a sport.

Think about it: if everyone were able to obtain as much perfection as this one guy demanded, the very first volleyball game would still be at 0-0 with a bump-set-spike volley action going on.

Perfection is boring! It’s the mistakes that give you points, and give people something to cheer about.

“Yeah, but it’s the OTHER team’s mistakes. Your team should try not to make any!”

Very true. In sports, you shouldn’t aim to make a mistake. Earlier in the essay, I explained that I really love playing volleyball; and when I play volleyball, I try my hardest to do well.

But I don’t demand perfection from myself because that’s both impossible and not fun to me.

In every facet of life, you have to understand that sometimes things aren’t going to go as smoothly as you planned. You can yell at your friends all you want to oil your sports-machine, but wrenches are going to get thrown in: mistakes are going to be made.

And how should you deal with these mistakes? Anger?

Hell no!

The only thing anger towards a teammate or a friend or a lover says is that you’re not going to bother taking the time to support that person, and that your idea of how things should have went should be sitting atop a glorious throne of ideas, looking down on the idea it’s talking to and dismissing it as “below him.”

By supporting each other, ESPECIALLY when mistakes are made, you’re creating a community that doesn’t want to make mistakes. But it’s not out of fear: rather, out of keeping this teamwork alive. Players who want to win because they want their team to succeed always end up better off than players who play because they’re afraid of getting yelled at.

Even if they don’t play better on the courts, they’ve got a better outlook on life. And I bet the team that supports each other is much more likely to go grab some beers after the game than the team with Johnny Yells-A-Lot on it.

Now, I don’t know a lot about Sufism, so if there’s anyone out there who does, please correct me; but there’s a Sufi saying that goes a bit like, “The master weaver incorporated the mistakes of his students into a larger pattern.” This goes along with a rule we learn in long-form improvisational comedy: there are no mistakes. Everything is a gift.

Your teammate not hitting the ball over the net just means that you guys get to rotate next time you get the ball. It also means you get that exciting aspect of trying to win back the serve! You get to weave this into the pattern of the game.

People should be clapping when these so called “mistakes” are made rather than when points are given. We should be a community of players rather than warring factions of humans.

After all, I think we can all agree we’ve had enough of war in general. So why don’t we stop treating each other like we’re always at war?

Smile and reassure your teammates. Remember that you’re doing this because you enjoy it. And you shouldn’t want to succeed: you should want your TEAM to succeed. As trite as that sounds, if you follow this little rule you’ll be a lot stronger as a group.

Don’t make people feel like failures. In the end, we really can’t fail. If we keep in mind those things that make us happy in life, at our worst we’re all just stumbling towards success, each and every day. And that sure as hell isn’t a bad thing.

So if one person’s doing a trust fall, let’s catch ‘em rather than argue their stability. Let’s treat people with the respect they deserve.

If you’re not on a sports team, start small: next time someone in a store asks you how you are today, respond, and then ask them how they’re doing. Treat them with kindness. Let them know that they’re not “failing” because they work at a retail store, or rip tickets at a toll booth. You’re not saying you’re better than them, and that they’re around only to serve your desires. You’re just checking up on your fellow teammate, and seeing if they’re enjoying this game of life as much as you are.

Then, when it’s over, we can all grab a beer together: arm-in-arm, looking for a pub in the unknown neighborhood of the afterlife.

Keep the love alive, everyone.

- Mike