We are all on the same team

Do you remember the feeling of being on a team? At school, maybe? All of you together, trying to strategise your way around some problem or other? Or maybe at work - figuring out how to get things finished on time, shoulder to shoulder? Maybe you’re on a team with members of your family or your partner or your dog - going on a walk that’s a little longer than you expected and getting slightly lost before stumbling back into familiar territory and giving your team member a bit of a scratch behind the ears while you breathe a quiet sigh of relief. 

Being on a team is, of course, a total cliché. People do corporate retreats to learn how to do it. They make movies about it. Everyone says they’re good at it in job interviews. It’s the whole basis of organised sport. Here’s the thing though: being on a team usually implies one very not-teamlike thing. There’s another team. And you hate them.

I went to a sports match recently. You can tell already from the words “sports match” that it doesn’t matter what sport it was because I neither know nor care, which put me somewhat in the dark in terms of what was going on in the game. Now, most people would have seen this as a disadvantage. Not me. Watching the players (on both teams) run around together down there I realised something the crowd didn’t know. I watched them duck and weave and sidestep like dancers in a complicated ballet and I realised: they’re on the same team. Working together for the crowd, dancing in formation, performing identical little rituals.

This is a Public Service Announcement: we’re on the same team. 

 Ever played a musical instrument in a group? Banged a drum at a music festival? Clapped like an idiot along to your favourite song? We’re on the same team!

You might be on a different team from someone but when you both watch someone do something like folding tiny origami pandas or glass blowing, you’re on the same team. 

Waited for a ludicrously long time while both lanes of traffic waited for a family of ducks to cross a road? Applauded the woman who eventually got out of her car to clap them in the right direction? You’re #teamducklady. We all are.

Watched some knife’s edge personal drama play itself out on the Olympics, hoping with every sinew of your body that a diver from Norway can summon up whatever neurons she needs to win this thing for her single mum and her hilarious Nan who you saw interviewed because you’ve accidentally not moved off the couch and have instead become an expert in diving?  Yep. Welcome to the team.

Dancing is a team sport. The suspension of disbelief - the taking of synchronised leaping at all seriously - is truly an imaginative group act.

If you have ever run down a hill, dived into cool water, experienced the joyous fear of doing something you are terrified of but know is safe, or eaten a truly magnificent meal, you are part of the team. 

 Ever witnessed an emergency? Amazing how quickly the team assembles. People assign themselves roles. Relationships form in an instant. Right there, dynamics are established. Team captain isn’t up for debate. Strategy is immediately determined. We’re instinctively good at being in a team together.

Humans judge each other in a nanosecond, but we’re good at talking to each other. We’re good at changing each other’s minds. In fact, without each other, we wouldn’t change our minds at all. You’re on a team even with the people you disagree with and don’t like. I know! Even those jerks are playing!

I had to do a group project once with a person whose views on life were the absolute opposite of mine. We couldn’t stand each other’s political views. Didn’t like much about each other at all - we probably still wouldn’t - but we had to present this project, so we studied. I realised I admired the way he organised his information. He liked my handwriting. When he drew a picture of a chicken rollings its eyes at one of my arguments about vegetarianism, I laughed out loud. I still reckon I’d want him nowhere near me on election day, but that was a funny chicken drawing.

Not everybody is redeemable. We’re not going to all hold hands and get along. In every team though, there are strengths and weaknesses. Look for the strengths. Public Service Announcement: we’re on the same team. If some of that team is comprised of #teamducklady, I’m fine with that.

This was commissioned and published by The Big Issue. Thanks to them as usual.