It is no secret to any reader who follows my blog to some degree that I play and love the game of rugby. I started in grade nine in high school, played a couple of seasons after I graduated, and stopped entirely, only to return to it again ten years later.
To be entirely honest, I don’t recommend coming out of retirement with absolutely no physical preparation, because I was in unspeakable pain the first few weeks. I am still in considerable pain here and there, depending on the physicality of a game, but I absolutely love it, as barbaric as that sounds.
We recently had a game in which our team played the team currently ranked first in our division. We lost in the sense of what the scoreboard reflected, but we played a damn good game of rugby together as a team and fought until the very end. The score indicated a loss, but it was a win for us.
I find the sportsmanship and bond between teammates in rugby to be some of the strongest ones in sports, and it is a privilege to play this sport and experience this. We put our bodies on the line for each other, and some might say that is as strong a bond as can exist in the context of trust and courage. And I think that’s why, when we do lose after battling it out for 80 minutes with grit and passion, we don’t see the score as a loss.
Rugby might not be something that poses much relevance to you, but the idea of losses not always being losses is applicable to every individual in existence. Yes, some losses are just that. But, sometimes, they’re a hell of a lot more, and I think it’s pretty neat that a show of heart is just as strong as a show of skill, depending on your outlook.
Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash
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