Perhaps it was the glass of wine, but I had a moment of great clarity: it’s ok to fail on occasion if your soul is serving a higher purpose. If your soul is serving a higher purpose, road-bumps will work themselves out. Horizon lines of possibilities will extend. Faith will shape impact. I felt that, at least for one moment earlier in the evening, I had served a purpose that was needed by someone.

Youth sport in my mind is simply a metaphor for life. Most people can learn skills, like dribbling around cones. What sets you up for a life of fulfillment is the deeper meaning to be found in the character you develop in the journey. The perseverance of a score always being 0-0 to maintain humility if you’re winning, and positive frame of mind if you’re losing. The extraordinary effort required to be consistently first to ball. The value of relationships. The importance of critical thinking in real (game) time. The sportsmanship in a hand-out to lever an opposing player off the ground. The commitment to performance in bending the light to consistently get to practices. The valuation of attitude itself – that if you believe it can happen, it can. The sacrifice of self-interest to serve the greater interest of a team.

You’re likely wondering how the heck a coaching story about “service” relates to community building.

Well, in Alberta, municipal government elections in the Fall of 2017 tend to bring the loud “I hate everything that is” voices out of the woodwork. It’s nicknamed “silly season” for a reason. It’s easy to take potshots. It’s much more challenging to actually do things once elected. Criticism is an individual’s to own. The problem is that actually doing things is ours – as a society – to own. Accusation and anger gets everyone all riled up. Years later, communities wonder what everyone was all riled up about in a story of much ado about nothing. In the mean-time, there has been paralysis of action.

The difference between “yours” and “ours” is everything. And I believe the difference – whether you are a hater or a builder – boils down to whether the perspective you hold close to your heart is that of service.

Those who “feel” the word “service” deeply, criticize less in context of understanding the complexity of challenges. They avoid participating in downward cycles of negativity knowing that there’s no winners in that game while being able to constructively critique by offering solutions. They out-do rather than out-talk. They don’t believe everyone is incompetent; they believe that more people, and more communities, need to be better enabled to achieve highest aspiration. They don’t believe they alone can solve the world’s problems. They do believe that their selflessness can help build a better world. They are firm in opinion as leaders need to be in a world where consensus is impossible, but listen more than they talk. They believe in decision making based on open creativity, intelligent and informed conversation, good debate, and respect despite inevitable differences. They rise above the stones in the road because deeper faith provides perspective.

These are attitudinal choices that leaders make. It’s a light switch. It’s on or off. Switched on, we pursue manifest destiny. Switched off we devolve to accepting fate however it is assigned. Everyone can make these choices. In sport we are trying to nurture the critical thinking required to wisely make these choices. By the time politics rolls around in our lives, we should know better, or make needed attitudinal corrections now. “To serve” is the tie that binds all the things we do to live a purposeful life. The brightness of our collective future depends on it.