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Team Sports
05 February 2007


Weekends are exhausting! Yesterday, instead of a relaxing Sunday start we were up at the crack of dawn to get Tom, our eldest, to the a triathlon (swimming, cycling and running) event he was taking part in - along with over 3,000 other kids and at least three times that number of parents and supporters.

It was the annual Weetabix Try-athlon (spelt this way it should be sponsored by AMD), and the emphasis is on participation rather than competing. In fact there is no way of knowing who is the fastest as the starts are staggered and times are not recorded.

Later on, talking about this with a friend he commented that it was good that it was not competitive as Australians are too competitive in general. Certainly this is a sport-obsessed nation who seem to get more than their fair share of winners in most sports. But this comment made me think about Bishop Brownings' observation that the real problem is the ideology of individualism.

So much of Western education is based on individual competition. Individual efforts and achievements are rewarded and acknowledged at every level. I guess this is why so many Western adults deeply believe that that their material prosperity is solely the result of their own work. At best this can only be a half-truth. The truth is that almost everything we achieve in life is a team effort.

As a sit here typing this, I can think of the many people who have been involved in designing and building the computer I am using; the team who have put together the For a Change website; and the many people who have contributed to the software which we use. I can think of the people who are involved in growing and making the food that I eat, the clothes that I wear, the transport that I use to get to work! And then there are all the people who have been involved in my education - starting with my parents, teachers and work colleagues. The list can go on and on.

Anything that any of us do rests on the work of countless other people, not just our own efforts - important though they may be. When we truly and deeply acknowledge this, I suspect we may start behaving differently, be more ready to share with others our material 'rewards', and act with more consideration to others who share our planet.




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