The Margins Have Margins: Three Books, One Question

Pope Francis speaks of a "Culture of Encounter." Father Greg Boyle, SJ writes about "kinship." Each is an essential ingredient for a better world, a warmer society. With each, there is no "us and them." It is "just us." Justice. Pope Paul VI said, If we want peace, work for justice. 

I love sports because I believe they cultivate what both Jesuits teach and preach. In part, the Culture of Encounter and Kinship are born because athletes spend so much time together. The opportunity to play, work for a common goal, strive for excellence, win, fail alone and together serve as a means by which to "erase the margins." 

Over the course of a season, I hope teammates "inch closer to creating a community of kinship such that God might recognize it." Some grow so close that they form a "circle of compassion." One in which "no one stands outside that circle—moving ourselves closer to the margins so that the margins themselves will be erased. "

I don't want to be overly optimistic about the power of sport. I've been involved in them long enough; I hope I hold a realistic view. It is important to understand: Sports can be...Athletics has the potential to...  Many times they fall short. AND, reading John Miller's book review entitled Sporting Struggles in the print edition of America, I realized something totally different: the margins have margins.

Each book profiles an athletes: Jerry West—basketball, Gayle Sayers—football, and Abby Wombach—soccer who testify to a different challenge, even the greats battle. What happens when love—which bound a person to a sport—is lost? How does what is born from the Culture of Encounter respond? What might kinship offer? 

How I wish Walt Whitman were with us. Perhaps he could offer a poetic response. Indeed, We are large, we contain multitudes. We also stand at the margins...none the same. Thank you to the voices who had the courage, and the ability to share.

Thoughtful reading: What happens when athletic heroes fall out of love with the game?  Important reflection. 

Photo Credits
Sister Corita's art

Is Failure Your Fuel?—Question from Two Great Female Leaders

On Monday, I received what I hope will be the results of my final COVID test for 2021. I opened the email from COLOR SF to see a green arrow that said NEGATIVE. In one sense, the words and the image were contradictory. Green means go. That's positive—and in this case—so is the word "negative." My brain was happy to make these connections.  With the thought of Carla Harris's “negative motivation” fresh in my mind, I started to wonder: How often does a negative approach elicit a green arrow? In other words, are more athletes and competitors motivated by something negative or would they rather be fired up by something positive? 

As written in my last post "The Positives of Negative Emotion," Carla Harris ,vice chairman of wealth management and senior client adviser at Morgan Stanley, admits that she "leverages what people say cannot be done into energy to prove them wrong." She coaches with negative motivation. Since reading about her philosophy, I have seen she's not alone.

In her book "Wolfpack: How to Come Together, Unleash Our Power and Change the Game," Abby Wambach promotes the lesson to "Make Failure Your Fuel." This realization was born from something negative. While still on the youth national team, she visited the U.S. Women’s national team’s locker room. Next to the door, she noticed a 5” x 7” photograph of  longtime rival: the Norwegian national team, celebrating after having just beaten the USA in the 1995 World Cup. Wambach wrote, "It was a picture of their own team’s last defeat.”

Five years later, when she became a member of that very national team, Wambach said "Hey, what was the deal with the picture you kept on the locker room wall of the Norwegian team? Why did you want that to be the last thing you looked at before you went out to play?" 

She writes “they began to explain to me that the first order of national team business is to win. But that when failure does come, the team isn't afraid of it; the team is fueled by it. The team never denies its last failure. We don't reject it. We don't accept is as proof that we aren't worth of playing at the highest level. Instead, we insist upon remembering. Because we know the lessons of yesterday's become the fuel for tomorrow’s win.”

I had to wonder: Would that work for me?  Do I need the visual of a tough moment to keep me focused? to fire me up? 

Wambach adds, I came to understand that "in order to become a champion—on and off the field—I'd need to spend my life transforming my failures into my fuel."

I thought to myself, there's something I can wrestle with. I'm not sure that transformation is anything I could do on my own. It would require patience, prayer, mentors and more. For me to work with something negative—like a loss or against an errant expectation is not easy. It asks something of me....deeper questions, stronger emotions—quite possibly the ones I don't want to deal with. 

Wambach puts in print the Old Rule: Failure means you're out of the game. New Rule: Failure means you're finally IN the game. I think negative emotion is calling us to this same realization.

Do you agree? Does proving people wrong get you going? Do you see negatives as positive? Is that fuel for the fire? Thankful for these female leaders who not only lead from the bench but set their own, unique and outstanding example.

Photo credits
Abby Quote
Norway
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