This past weekend was the first annual Firebird Classic basketball tournament for Ottawa Phoenix Basketball. It is always amazing to be part of something that was once just in your imagination. That being said, I became very conscious this weekend about some of the things that we all hold as representative of our success. Unfortunately, these are not always things to be treasured but really meaningless trappings of a materialistic and unconscious existence. We have become so consumed by this false understanding, we place importance or emphasis on things that don't really bring anything into our lives and all of the things that should matter, get lost.
After the awards presentation at the tournament, a parent ran across the floor claiming that I must have made some kind of error and she wanted to know where her son's medal was.
Let's backtrack slightly. The losing team was presented with medals and the winning team was given a plaque. We then gave out nearly $400 worth of prizes to individual players - All Stars.
Back to the parent. She first approached Coach Waterman and when she was unsatisfied with his response, she came to me. All of her tournament experience over the years has lead her to the conclusion that he son is now going to leave our tournament experience heartbroken because he did not receive an individual medal as part of the "winning" team. When I told her that the award to the team was the plaque, she replied, "That means my son has nothing to show for his win." She then demanded that I print medals for the winning team. I responded to that with a resounding, "Hell no I won't!" I then asked her if she might want to address the possibility that her son's experience was greater than the $1.50 medal and that since it was a team effort (basketball being one of those sports), that it may be more appropriate to celebrate that the TEAM won. She wasn't hearing that at all. Her response was, "Who gets to keep the plaque?" The coach of the other team even offered that his team would be more than happy to give their medals because the last thing he needed in his life was another $1.50 medal. I reemphasized to her that it was the experience that mattered.
Now this would make so much more sense to me if we were talking about the feelings of a small child. This is the parent of a 17 year old young man. To win this tournament you had to play 7 games - 5 of which were all on Saturday. No one in that organization has ever had to work that hard, together with 11 other guys, to get a win. That is an experience! Instead of celebrating that, we were bickering over a $1.50 medal.
What is the world coming to? A place where someone must give you something for you to feel that your efforts are valued, a world where the individual is above the group, a world where it is always someone else's fault, a world where you never grow up because your parents enable you with everything, a world where, if we are not careful, our children will not develop the tools to do more than just survive, a world where selfish is celebrated and selflessness is shunned.
Just a thought. Holla back.
