What if we can win?

A reflection on world cup rugby and social shifts

I blink my tears away. I’m watching the rugby world cup semi-final with a bunch of men. Now is not the time to cry: the game is tense, with South Africa and Wales in a neck-to-neck struggle. But my tears are not for the game, but for my country of South Africa. My tears are not of sadness, but of hope.

Since the beginning of the rugby season I’ve been thinking that the Springboks won’t get far. Yet here we are, playing really well. How easy it is for me to default into the belief that “we can’t win.”

Like other colonized countries, South Africa is struggling. This struggle has many dimensions, but as I watch this game the one that I feel most acutely is a struggle of worldviews.

When my ancestors began planning the shape of South Africa after the British occupation, there were many possible futures. But they choose to continue the path of oppression. I imagine that centuries of colonialism had stripped them of imagination, that the open wounds of the Anglo-Boer war hindered their ability to trust or eroded their will to create something different. And so the majority supported a belief that there was no way for people of all races to co-exist after all the wounding of colonization, the unequal distribution of resources and the persistent fear of sharing power.

And here am I, with a beer mug full of weak coffee (the game started at 9am!), watching our multi-racial team. While I wonder whether the team’s relationships are equitable and their conversations honest, the optics say, “We are one team, we stand together.” So my eyes burn with the hope that just as this team might win, so we too can overcome the difficulties that face us today. That we can indeed get this right.

I think about our generation like a rugby team. We do not carry a logo-covered leather ball, we carry the future of our country and the possibility for future generations to live well together.

Our goal is not to win the game, but to live into a better future — a future where we learn to work together, building organizations, neighborhoods, systems and worlds that honors the sacred in every one.

Our opposition is not a row of players from the other team, but ourselves. What hinders us to build, to move forward, to try, to fail, to fall, to gain some ground, is primarily within us. It is the stubborn belief that says, “We can’t do this,” or, “This is too big.” We are held captive by intergenerational trauma, by our reflex of distrust, dismissal, fear. The shame of our past robs us from forging genuine relationships across lines of color. We fear that we might lose wealth, we are daunted by the seemingly impossibility of solving inequity, of facing anger, fear, hate or rage.

But what if we can overcome ourselves? What if we are stronger than the forces that threaten to keep us from using the gifts of our lives to write a better future into being?

What if we are not alone in this? What if there are many people already on the playing field, waiting for us to join?

What if we will find the support we need as we declare our commitment and start showing up?

What if we can live as if our lives are the world cup final?

When a rugby team walks onto the damp rugby field, they have no idea if they will win. But they are willing to give it their all. I would like to look back on my life, on our team, on this generation, and know that we too, gave it our all.

“What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great.
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.” — Rainer Maria Rilke