The Next Best Thing

(Originally emailed 12 October 2007)

It seems the All Blacks lost their match against France and are out of the World Cup. It seems the New Zealanders are taking it badly.

I was listening to the Sports Report on ABC National this morning (yes, I know, I listen to the word's most boring radio station), and they were talking about the abject misery that Kiwis are feeling as a result of loosing the Word Cup again.

A guest commentator was the (former?) coach of the New Zealand national basketball team - an American. He made the interesting comment that New Zealanders, in general, were really bad at loosing. They had no perspective when it comes to playing (especially Rugby) - it's either win or loose. If they win, they don't even care or notice if it was a pretty dodgy win (just dumb luck), it's still the best thing to ever happen - a great victory. If they loose it's simply the end of the world. There's no sense of "pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again."

He talked about how they seemed to think they were owed a win (because they had put so much money into the game), and were seriously shocked and angry that they had lost. He talked about how they were probably going to stress about it for the next four years instead of just moving on.

He even said it came down to immaturity - they weren't mature enough to be able to take it in their stride. Now, when an American calls you immature, you know you're in trouble.

It put me in mind of a song that's currently one of my favourites, called The Lucky One. It has a wonderful line in it that just resonates with me:

"You know the next best thing to playing and winning is playing and loosing."

I've always been about as competitive as a dish cloth. I play games because I like to play, and sometime ago I found out that you often have the most fun when you're not playing to win. As a result, I don't get too cut up when 'my team' looses (which does annoy a lot of other people, but such is life).

We need to encourage that view in ourselves, each other and the next generation as much as possible, I think. It's not the world when we win, so it isn't the end of the world when we loose.

After all, the next best thing to playing and winning is playing and loosing.