Learning from basketball
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For instance: (1) weekly win-lose records of mounting emotional intensity, (2) organized local/national-level competitions, (3) degrees of integration between stars and team players, (4) a final contest between winners and losers with their respective supporters, (5) looking toward “next time.”
These parallel rituals are resolved not so much by number four, as by number five. How do winners and losers carry on together?
They recall once more that it’s not the end of the world. The world — whether as school, state or nation — still stands. The attention of basketball players, coaches and fans together soon turns to next season. Likewise, politicians and their constituencies soon turn the sigh of an ending into the call to another new beginning. Democracy runs on faith, i.e., trust in a system with the capacity to do better. There are new days to dawn.
