Playing Nice? Start Playing Real

So, this may come as a bit of a shocker to some of you, but I actually play baseball on a co-ed, two-pitch team.  Purely recreational, and essentially just for fun (although there are a few people on our team who are clearly more competitive than others, admittedly).  Overall, I have a really good time when we play.  A couple of years ago, a few of us got together and decided to create a team for this league, mostly as a way to increase our physical activity and to just hang out once a week.  The understanding was “it’s just for fun” — and frankly, this is a philosophy that I can totally get behind.

Do I like to win?  ABSOLUTELY!  And, it’s not my primary focus.  My objective each and every game is to go out there, play the best I can, have some fun and challenge myself, while hanging out with people I like.  So far, every year we’ve managed as  a team to have a reasonably good time, even as we finish near the bottom of the rankings.  We’ve also watched ourselves improve, collectively and individually, as time’s gone on.  You know, going from 2 runs in a season to several runs in a game is a good thing, I think.  Heck, we’ve even won a couple of games from time to time.

Now, here’s one of the challenges we’ve run into this year.  For some reason, this year we’ve suffered from what I want to call “perceived lack of commitment”.  One of the rules for the league is that there must be 4 women on the field at all times.  You cannot play with any less than 4 women.  For the last few weeks, we go to the field every week wondering if we’ll have enough women to play.  Why?  Well, a couple of women who were originally part of our team for the last couple of years decided not to play this year.  Takes us down to 5.  Then, every week, soemthing has come up — always absolutely legitimate, I must confess — that puts us another woman or two down.  Last night was no exception.  Got to the field, only to realize that we only had 3 women playing, one of whom was planning to leave after the first game, which meant we’d have to forfeit both games.  Wanna know how I felt?  Totally pissed.  I’m being honest here, I was irked that I had arrived at yet another game, after wolfing down dinner, not sure whether we’d be playing or not.

Now while I could expound about commitment and related issues, I’m not going there.  Why?  Because that’s not what this entry’s about.  What this is about, is the communication — or lack thereof — that I noticed in the aftermath of discovering that we didn’t have enough women to play.  I felt totally put out, as aforesaid.  But did I say it?  No.  Why not?  Because I knew that the women who weren’t playing had legitimate reasons and I didn’t want them to misinterpret my frustration as a slam against them.  The cost?  I wasn’t being real and authentic. So my stomach went into knots.

You see, here’s the thing:  when you’re in relationship with others you can “play nice” — indeed it’s what we’re taught to do from a very young age.  The challenge is that we as human beings often interpret “playing nice” as limited to “say only nice things” — don’t convey anger, don’t convey frustration — it’s as though “playing nice” really means “play superficial”.  What I am coming to realize is that playing nice is really about “playing real”.  It’s about including, in a really genuine, authentic way, the whole enchilada.  So last night, I believe it would have behooved me to articulate my frustration.  I didn’t need to negate the choices of others, or judge them in any way:  instead, playing real would have meant me being authentic, saying what I needed to say, and then moving on.

Bottom-line: playing nice only serves when you’re also playing real.  Playing nice, when it’s in any way inauthentic, or only part of the picture doesn’t work.  So, from now on, my objective is going to be to play real — I think it’ll be a stretch when I’m afraid of being judged — and I’m going to challenge myself to stretch.  I’ve simply got to believe that the people I hang around with absolutely can handle me telling my truth.  (And, I can totally play real in a nice way, regardless of what my truth is).