Playing as a Team

As an 8-year old kid, I remember attending an all-boys school where participation in sports was compulsory: soccer in the winter, cricket in the summer. While I was never particularly good at either, I developed a special hatred for soccer - not because there's anything inherently wrong with "a gentleman's game played by hooligans"; but because as an 8-year old I saw something in my team mates which has echoed throughout my life.

For anyone who hasn't played soccer, it's a sport which rewards a team's ability to work together and maneuver the ball around the field, creating opportunities to score. A team which plays entirely defensively will never be able to prevent every goal, and a team which plays entirely offensively will invariably create opportunities for the other team to score. A good team knows how to balance both of these roles, they spread out and are willing to put the team's success ahead of their individual glory...

Looking out over the soccer field as an 8-year old, what I saw instead was a ball of other kids clustered around the ball, each attempting to take possession and somehow score a goal - all while the coach shouted from the sidelines for them to "spread out". I didn't see a team, I saw a bundle of individuals each out to achieve their own success and failing...

...and so I developed a hatred for soccer, which was made marginally bearable by filling the role of goal keeper - where at least my team attempted to help instead of trying to steal the ball from me at every opportunity.

As an adult, I am no longer subject to requirements around compulsory sports participation - and yet I continue to see the same behaviour in the way people engage in relationships. Just like when we were kids, it may superficially seem that being the most [beautiful, intelligent, successful, fun] partner will guarantee success in our relationships, and when we inevitably lose we blame it on the rest of the team failing to be as good as us.

Watching 8-year olds complain about how their team mates aren't good enough when all of them were crowding the ball with no regard for teamwork gives us plenty of opportunities to laugh at the absurdity of that viewpoint; and yet when it comes to relationships we act as if they're somehow exempt from that critical evaluation.

Maybe it's time for our society to take a step back from the ball and think about whether we can be better partners by focusing on working together for the sake of the relationship, rather than pursuing the satisfaction of our own individual desires. If only it were that simple, and yet in some ways it rather is - because we don't need to fix society in order to build a good relationship, we just need to find one person who is willing to seek the globally optimal solution to the prisoner's dilemma together with us - and unlike in the prisoner's dilemma, we can communicate!