Keeping Score

I was watching my daughter play a soccer game. It was indoor soccer, as outdoor soccer is moderately miserable to completely impossible in the winter or early spring. The games are quick and everyone has a lot of fun. Someone scored a goal and everyone cheered. As I was taking a sip of beer a confused gentleman sitting next to me asked me what the score was. I looked up at the scoreboard and it read.

 

 

Home: 0                                                                  Visitor: 0

 

 

“Oh, many times they don’t score these games. It depends on the referee but usually they don’t keep track.”

 

He chuckled a bit.

 

“Well, what’s the point then?”

 

I explained to him that with the indoor leagues no one really cares, it’s just a chance to play more soccer and have fun. Many times one of the teams is short anyways and they freely change players back and forth to make it playable. Sometimes even a sibling of a different age will jump in that played an earlier game so the players can play. Heck, I’ve even seen the coaches’ play goalie.

 

He seemed unconvinced and mildly distressed.

 

“How could anyone play a game without knowing who won?”

 

I shrugged and laughed.

 

“I don’t know, but the girls don’t seem to care.”

 

The game went on with more goals scored. It was fun, but I have no idea who “won” the game. I asked my daughter after the game and she had no idea either.

 

The next day I started thinking a bit more upon this exchange though, because I feel is central to almost everything I write about here.

 

Why do we feel the need to keep score?

 

Life is full of multi-player games that serve no purpose, and we all play them. We keep a mental tally of how well we are doing and constantly compare ourselves to others. Our happiness doesn’t really matter, only the score at the end of the game.

 

The games are subtle, and oftentimes we don’t realize we are playing them. We see someone’s vacation pictures on social media or read about a family who is living the dream and feel a pang of jealousy or fear of missing out.

 

They have a higher score than us.

 

We go to a dinner party and see a house more beautiful and lavishly decorated than ours and suddenly long for a kitchen remodel. If only we could have whiter teeth and higher performing kids than that annoyingly perfect soccer mom who volunteers at the soup kitchen between practices.

 

She certainly has a higher score than me.

 

But maybe your teeth are white enough. Maybe your kids are perfectly happy without more scheduled activities. Maybe your life can be complete without the African safari that your sister-in-law just got back from.

 

Maybe your contribution to the world feels about right if you just stop keeping score.

 

When I was growing up I was conditioned to keep score by just about everyone – parents, teachers, television. I was taught the score mattered, even when after a losing battle someone would glibly say:

 

“It doesn’t matter if you won or lost, but how you played the game.”

 

I could see in their eyes though that it DID matter. It’s funny how no one tells you this after you win. Only when you lose.

 

I guess how you play the game is just a losers way to keep score.

 

I measured my success in life on how well I scored in these games. I compared how fast I ran, how high my test scores were, how popular I was, how much money I could make. I had no internal metric on how good I was doing in each of these areas so I looked to others and started competing. The problem with this is the only game that matters is internal. How happy and satisfied are you with life. How true to your values are you existing.

 

There is no way to look at someone else and know how you are doing with regard to this, and frankly it doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t make any rational sense to try and figure out how happy someone is and then try and run up the score and become happier.  This is a recipe for misery. Happiness is internal and there is no score or game to be played with it. You can’t really chase it, only let it emerge.

 

It’s all about who shows up

 

It took me a while to learn this, but most of the games I played were predetermined before I even started playing them. Not exactly of course, but let me explain. I’ve won exactly 1 race in my life. It was a 5k and I killed it. I’m not sure if it was a personal best for me, but it was close. It felt pretty great and I was pretty proud of myself.

 

A couple years later I ran the same race with a similar time and didn’t win. It wasn’t even close. I think I finished 4^th or 5^th. It wound not have been possible for me to win this race no matter how hard I trained as the people that finished ahead of me were always going to be faster. I could shave a few seconds off my time, but nothing short of performance enhancing drugs and Olympic style training is going to bring down my 5k time by more than a minute. If those 3 or 4 people would have been busy that day I would have won the race.

 

The point is the winner in most of the games we play is determined by who shows up or who we choose to compete against. I don’t race much anymore, but I’m starting to get the itch now that I’m back to running. Racing is kind of fun and exciting. But I won’t play the game of caring about my place because it’s all a matter of who shows up. I will run hard only because it is fun to see what my body will do. Not caring about the outcome of things that don’t really matter (and most things really don’t matter in the big picture) is a super power.

 

Most of the games we play are meaningless. They are background noise. Distractions. Only play them if they are fun and you are not too attached to the outcome.

 

Stop keeping score on things that don’t really matter.