Why we search for a WHY

The cover picture of this post was taken during the 2017 Italian League Finals (Italy’s version of the NBA), when I was working as the Sport Director for the professional team in Trento, Italy. Our team was coming off a game 1 in which we dominated our opponent – Venice – in their home gym. The European basketball community was certain that we were on our way to winning the championship, and I didn’t disagree. But a series of events unfolded, and we ultimately lost the championship series 6 games.

Why? “We deserved to win” – thoughts my old worldview would produce. “We were the better team” – famous last words uttered by losers. As humans we always ask why… we’re comfortable with why… we NEED a why. Why did I get that parking ticket? Why did she not text me back? Why did I not get that promotion I “deserved”? We need a why, because it fits our never-ending quest to uncover an objective Truth that doesn’t even exist.

Once we come to our final reasoning, we can sleep under a blanket of comfort, knowing that whatever “unfortunate” event took place wasn’t our fault. My why in 2017 was that injuries derailed our team’s hopes… we were unlucky. Today I’ve sought a different why, and come to the conclusion that we didn’t deserve to win…we got exactly what we deserved. This is almost always the case in both life and in the game of basketball.

The game of basketball is the world’s chosen sport because it’s a mirror to the game of life. But in both games, life and basketball, you have an actual scoreboard (your bank account, external success, points, wins, losses, etc.) and you have some mystical karmic scoreboard. The not so metaphorical scoreboard is taking place on an altered plane of reality, where points are being tallied based on some inexplicable push and pull of energy, intention, action.

Through my present-day paradigm, we didn’t deserve to win because I ever so slightly cheated the game. Because of cultural and political reasons, along with my my newness to the country, my style of management was to create a silo for myself and the American athletes (each team had 5 Americans and 5 Italians). It kept our group in a state of flourishing, but for reasons beyond explanation, maybe it cost us points on the karmic scoreboard. I have zero tangible proof that this is the case... ask every individual player, coach, and manager on the team, and they’ll all have a different reason for why we lost… this is life.

Cheating the game is like getting the answers to the test beforehand… it always catches up to you. An analogy I heard on a podcast between Charles Eisenstein and Aubrey Marcus in May of 2021 rings in my mind (would highly recommend the podcast, and reading their books). They built a beautiful analogy revolving around the 1980’s television show Inspector Gadget, equating the spirit of the show to how our prayers are answered.

Gadget is a clumsy detective tasked to save the world with a slew of fancy tools at his disposal. He bumbles around and thinks he’s saving the day, but it’s actually his dog and niece that are the brains behind the operation. The dog and niece are metaphors for God, the Universe, an Inner Guidance that leads us where we need to be. But it’s Gadget’s Intention, coupled with the unseen Guidance, that saves the day. If it weren’t for Gadget trying so hard, and his actions being in complete congruence with his goal, then it wouldn’t come together.

“When a prayer is just verbal, then whatever is listening to the prayer is like ‘Hold on, is that guy serious? Because he says he wants peace on Earth, but here in this encounter he was verbally violent and judgmental. I’m kind of confused what this guy wants. But when anyone commits to something, makes sacrifices, expends their effort, that is a much more convincing prayer.” – Charles Eisenstein

My prayer for our team in 2017 was strong, but it wasn’t quite championship caliber – I didn’t put enough energy into building the full team… and spent too much time nurturing the American segment of it. And the end result is Justice.

Jared