Winning is fun. You’ll never hear me say that winning isn’t important - it’s part of what drives us. Sometimes, if you win enough in the regular season and at the right times in the postseason, you get to play on the final weekend, and it feels good.

Everyone who makes it that far belongs there; there are teams that are dominant all year, teams that figured it out late, teams that might not look amazing on paper but just scrap and claw and play together…and sometimes a team just goes on a heater that carries them all the way to the Final 4. These possibilities, experiences, and stories are why athletes play and fans watch sports. And, no matter the outcome, the memories of that postseason run stick with us for a long time.

But is winning “what it’s all about?” Winning is fun and usually feels great in the moment, but the thing about moments - whether a single second or a whole season - is that they eventually end. If everything is about that one moment and I DO win, what next? And if everything is about that moment but then I DON’T win, what happens to all the stuff that got me there? This is why winning can’t be “what it’s all about;” we deprive ourselves of so much richness and fullness and opportunity if we reduce everything to the accomplishment of a single, fleeting moment.

This group played their best volleyball on the last weekend of the season, yet what I will remember most about RCC Volleyball’s Final 4 run this season is that, after we lost our last game of the year to finish 4th (program best ever!), the mood in the locker room was not one of frustration or disappointment or bitterness. Rather, you could palpably feel the gratitude radiating from players and coaches and staff alike. There were tears, yes - because of how much love was in the room. There was much reflection, not on missed plays but on friendships built, memories engraved, joy embodied, laughs shared, struggle overcome, and so many moments that flowed together to make a uniquely special season.

It’s not that winning is nothing, it’s just that it can’t be the only thing. The Final 4 was a great accomplishment and a rare experience; all the little things that got us there are what sports are about.

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Train of Thought, Part 2: Towards Abundance | 12.1.25

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all learn to give our egos a good job in service of something greater than ourselves? Certainly some of us try, but of course it doesn’t always work out that way. The prevalence of ego-driven othering and the resulting division in today’s world is staggering. Yet, is it really more common than it’s ever been, or is it just more in our faces because of the saturated, frenetic, and never-sleeping media environment of the 21st century?

Either way, many human societies today laud individual differentiation and achievement – in the United States, there is a brand of comparison-driven, desperate scrambling for success that is combined with - and born out of - deeply built-in inequality and outrageous levels of entitlement. We drink this volatile and powerful ideological cocktail, and it gives us the foundational principles of our social, political, and economic systems. The result is that many of us are drunk with the need to “get ahead,” but ahead of what or whom?

It’s one of the first things taught in high school Economics classes: Scarcity is the principle upon which Capitalism (you know, the American Way) is founded. This scarcity paradigm – sneakily couched as the promise of America as “the land of opportunity” – in which we live and struggle dictates that there is only so much [wealth; success; joy; love; prosperity; human rights; safety; nourishment; respect; time; opportunity] to go around. Therefore, in order for me to have more, you have to have less. And, because everything is scarce, I have to – and have permission to – do almost whatever it takes to “get mine,” including taking yours away.

Even more insidious is the ideology that says not only does it have to be unequal, but inequity doesn’t actually exist because I deserve it more than you do - I’m more deserving, more capable of pulling myself up by my bootstraps. If you’re failing, it’s because you were born less than and that’s just how it is.

This is the fixed mindset, on the grandest scale; our cruel twisting of the idea of meritocracy means that it’s only the land of opportunity for some, because that’s how the system stays functional – if there’s only so much to go around, there have to be Winners and Losers (does that language sound familiar?). But if you dig down underneath the social constructs and the unmitigated egos that wrote up our social contracts – and that continue to enforce them – is scarcity a natural state of being for humans?

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