Skeleton me

How you react to loss is a major measure of character.

This is not to say that there are no times when, if you fail (to get what you want, or just more generally, or life is just hard) that you shouldn’t just grieve and weep and cry. I’m not at all one for saying that life is about being stoic and suffering on. That’s my grandma.

I have a few friends going through some very hard stuff right now and I am filled with both sympathy and empathy about their genuinely heartbreaking issues. Of which many are requiring sadness and worry and grief. I would like to do more to help. Sorrow is hard to drink alone.

But, in the sporting sense at least, I believe that there are a whole range of ways to react to loss.

And – yesterday – the Sunfires lost to the Victorian team who are, by all accounts (and by all previous score tallies) the best team in the competition. You can read here for actual football related stuff.

I cannot speak for the entirety of the team, because I am (we are) only sponsoring a third of one player, but for me at least I would say that there is much to be commended in the quality of playing hard, risking much, losing well and thinking not of the loss and the sooking and the sad face (i.e. how you didn’t get what you wanted), but what could have be done better, what could have be achieved, how you arrived at this place, where else you want to go. And seeing life as entirely within your character to affect and improve and change with renewed vigour and energy.

I’d like to lose like this more often.

Maybe it’s like how I feel after each yoga or pilates class at Black Dove. A renewed sense of humility at the limitations of my body and what I have asked of it on that day, and a renewed sense of possibility about what can be achieved by the physical form, by my relationship to it, and the training and discipline and joy I might encounter with it.

Hmmm… A snippet of conversation with Jan has stayed with me for the last 24 hours. Tutti Scott, however, is making a comeback.

These are the girls from the Morningside Wildcats (I’m thinking, but cannot be sure. Maybe they are just from Brisbane). I think we have an our Emma, another Emma, a Sherie and another excellent player. I await to hear her name. (Her Name is Jenna. Ta Andrew.)

Good luck to the girls from WA today in the grandfinal. No doubt theirs may be a day to react to loss. But if it isn’t, then I’m going to take my hat off to them big time.

Right back at the beginning we discussed what it meant to stake your name on someone else’s good character and your esteem for them.

I’d like to thank the very many people, my friends, Emma’s friends, random bike acquaintances, patient work colleagues, confused friends of friends for helping financially and emotionally in this graphic endeavour. We had some losses ourselves, but these were more than mitigated by a warm fuzzy feeling generated by feeling connected to something approaching community.

It’s been hard for me moving to Brisbane. I’m going back to Melbourne next week and although my heart is fluttering with excitement, it’s also feeling the great mixture of emotions that comes from loving something and losing it and leaving it and knowing that that was the loss you needed to experience at the time.

Because the other team were better on the day. It’s not that you can’t play with the big kids, but – on the day – the scoreboard didn’t lie.

I have been picking myself up after a couple of bad losses. Sometimes I reacted well. Sometimes I scuffed my toe in the dirt and spent the whole next match scratching up grass away from the action. I took comfort in the safety of the boundary line.

Being a part of this whole thing is feeling the kind of silly hyper-distillation of living in excessive sports metaphor.

Let’s leave it with this last thought:

I’m proud to have been a sponsor.

Thanks Emma.