I met this team of footballers after losing a match in the intercollegiate tournament. Theirs was a good team and was expected to reach the finals. They were runners up last year.
I asked one of them how it was to lose unexpectedly. They replied me with silence.
Later I met one of them in the canteen who turned to me and said, that the coach had always told them that 'in competitive team sports a team has only fifty percent chance of winning. While losing we were told to feel normal’. He went on to say, that 'it was fun coming and playing. We are back to our usual selves now’. I was awe struck by this attitude.
I wonder, whether this can stimulate us to consider that disappointments are not determinants of our well being. At best a disappointment may unsettle us for a while. But, most of us will return to our sane moments to look beyond every disappointment. It is good to look at our achievements and losses lightly and not intensely as they are ordinary realities.
We are not puffed up by our achievements or let down by our losses. We have an identity beyond our gains and losses. We are like a lamb carried by the shepherd on his shoulders, loved, secure and always belonging! Our identity is, ‘The Lord is my shepherd’.
M.C.Mathew (text and photo)
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