Different Perspective – An Experiment
Here is a little experiment for you to try. The next time you are on vacation or visiting a city in which you know few, if any, people, go find a ball park where there is a youth game in progress and watch it.
A few things you might notice:
The umpires are more fair. It's amazing how good the umpires are when you have no stake in the game. Or, if the ump does make a mistake, you might be surprised at how little temptation you have to shout at him or point it out. You might actually find yourself feeling some compassion for him.
Some of the parents sound ridiculous. You will likely hear people shouting things at their kids that make you scratch your head or think, "That poor kid. Leave him alone. Just let him play." It's amazing how different things sound when you don't know any of the people who are saying them.
You'll forget about everything that happened in the game as soon as you leave. There might be errors, bad pitches, bad swings, bad base-running decisions, but none of it really matters to you. Therefore it will be easy to forget. Imagine if we had the ability to have the same short memory at our own games?
This exercise has been good for me, personally. I love watching baseball, and so I will often find a game to watch. A couple years ago, while I was watching an 8U game where I knew no one, I noticed some of those things that I described above, and it really made me think about the idea of perspective.
The perspective I was watching the game of strangers with was one of no emotion. I was simply able to watch a game and not be emotionally invested in it. Doing so made me see the game a whole lot differently. I liked it. I liked the way it felt. So I have begun praying that I will be able to watch my kids' games with less emotion invested. Of course, the emotions come from loving them and wanting to see them succeed. And so in order to be able to check my emotions at the gate I have to begin thinking of "success" a little differently. I'll speak to that in a different post.
We'll just keep this one simple and wrap it up right here. Try my experiment above. Allow it to challenge you to change the way you watch your kids' games.