[here4WBB]

I’m sitting in the Minneapolis-St Paul Airport this morning reflecting on the season, the tournament, and the game…
Throughout my life, the game of basketball has provided me with challenges, joys, and and some insight at personal meaning.
Last night I sat in an arena with 18,000 people watching the national championship. That was more people than the entire population of my home town when I was growing up in Helena, Montana. There we used to line up in freezing cold temperatures so we could get into our little 1500 capacity gym and watch our brawny Bengals play a slate of competitors for the best in the state from small cities from as far away as 250 miles.
As a young teen I got to experience the joy of winning, since our team was gifted and won the state championship during my first three years in HS. Aside from a season of packed houses, our townspeople rewarded the coach with a brand new ‘54 Ford and approved a bond measure to build a new high school, which included a state of the art basketball court. One year after we moved into the new facility, I got to experience the agony of losing as I sat in that gym after we had been beaten in the state regionals. I remember sitting in the quiet gym after that final game trying to extract meaning from this game of win and lose. As a young teen I wondered what was the quality that could be extracted from the elusive duality of winning and losing. I had no answer but it informed my thinking.
I had a similar existential moment after sitting in the Target Arena Friday night after the Stanford loss. I could get angry at the players or the coach. I could look for someone to blame—the refs or the seeding committee. I could regret having invested myself in following the team’s season — attending all their home games, traveling to the Bahamas, Spokane, and now, to Minneapolis. None of those reactions seemed fruitful. If I was to embrace the lessons of my teenage self decades ago and honor the adult psyche that emerged from a lifetime of experiences, I had to find a more satisfying, all inclusive means of internalizing the dilemma of winning and losing.
As I sat in the arena on Sunday night watching the two teams play who had survived the tournament to play for the championship, I found solace in honoring each moment of the game. And yes, once again the nature of the external game produced winners and losers, but from my current perspective, which was not attached to outcome, I was able to transcend winning and losing and embrace the playing of the game.
And this morning in the airport waiting to return home, as I reflect on the lessons learned, the lesson from a basketball game became a metaphor for life itself. Finding meaning in the parts require me to bridge the whole, and in so-doing, it opens the way to accept the nature of dualities in life itself.

thanks so much for your posting.  We were there Friday night as well, and spent quite a bit of time before and after the game enjoying the streets and restaurants of Minneapolis.  I had similar thoughts about how we focus on the binary points of winning and losing in sports, and in doing so, lose sight of the magnificence of the game.

[here4WBB]

I’m sitting in the Minneapolis-St Paul Airport this morning reflecting on the season, the tournament, and the game…
Throughout my life, the game of basketball has provided me with challenges, joys, and and some insight at personal meaning.
Last night I sat in an arena with 18,000 people watching the national championship. That was more people than the entire population of my home town when I was growing up in Helena, Montana. There we used to line up in freezing cold temperatures so we could get into our little 1500 capacity gym and watch our brawny Bengals play a slate of competitors for the best in the state from small cities from as far away as 250 miles.
As a young teen I got to experience the joy of winning, since our team was gifted and won the state championship during my first three years in HS. Aside from a season of packed houses, our townspeople rewarded the coach with a brand new ‘54 Ford and approved a bond measure to build a new high school, which included a state of the art basketball court. One year after we moved into the new facility, I got to experience the agony of losing as I sat in that gym after we had been beaten in the state regionals. I remember sitting in the quiet gym after that final game trying to extract meaning from this game of win and lose. As a young teen I wondered what was the quality that could be extracted from the elusive duality of winning and losing. I had no answer but it informed my thinking.
I had a similar existential moment after sitting in the Target Arena Friday night after the Stanford loss. I could get angry at the players or the coach. I could look for someone to blame—the refs or the seeding committee. I could regret having invested myself in following the team’s season — attending all their home games, traveling to the Bahamas, Spokane, and now, to Minneapolis. None of those reactions seemed fruitful. If I was to embrace the lessons of my teenage self decades ago and honor the adult psyche that emerged from a lifetime of experiences, I had to find a more satisfying, all inclusive means of internalizing the dilemma of winning and losing.
As I sat in the arena on Sunday night watching the two teams play who had survived the tournament to play for the championship, I found solace in honoring each moment of the game. And yes, once again the nature of the external game produced winners and losers, but from my current perspective, which was not attached to outcome, I was able to transcend winning and losing and embrace the playing of the game.
And this morning in the airport waiting to return home, as I reflect on the lessons learned, the lesson from a basketball game became a metaphor for life itself. Finding meaning in the parts require me to bridge the whole, and in so-doing, it opens the way to accept the nature of dualities in life itself.

thanks so much for your posting.  We were there Friday night as well, and spent quite a bit of time before and after the game enjoying the streets and restaurants of Minneapolis.  I had similar thoughts about how we focus on the binary points of winning and losing in sports, and in doing so, lose sight of the magnificence of the game.