Perfectly United in Mind and Thought

I think about a football team. Or a household. “United in mind and thought” means everyone upholding one purpose. It sounds great, in theory, but it’s much more cumbersome to execute and replicate — mainly because there are endless ends to value and we are limited.

A football team and household operate in very different terms. Their purpose and “oneness” look different. However, they point in the same direction. Both require the individual to compromise and make sacrifices for the whole. Obviously. A father must work to provide for the family. A quarterback must prepare psychically and mentally to contribute to the team. A child’s contribution to the family might be one of omission (e.g. no misbehavior causing trouble for the rest). Ultimately, contributing to the purpose of the group requires individual responsibility and suffering.

“Perfectly united in mind and thought.”

It’s a wonderful aim, but difficult to achieve. One reason being it’s easy to identify and determine the group purpose, but difficult to make sense of each member’s duty and role.

Here’s an example: a defensive back on a football team has obvious reason to be united in mind and thought — he wants to help the team win football games. Again, an easy ideal for the group, but a unique and obscure task for the individual. How does he actually contribute to the team? There a quite a few ways to look at this.

Well, for starters, he should learn to run backwards. His role within his team is to cover the other team and stop them from advancing forward. Okay. He should probably learn to tackle. He should learn coverages. He should also figure out how to get bigger and faster and stronger among other, more specific things such as being a reliable, responsible leader.

Okay. So that’s a heavy burden to take on. And by no means are any of those things easy to accomplish.

Even if he progresses and achieves everything he is capable of accomplishing, he might still give up a game winning touchdown losing the game for his own team. So what does that mean? Is he a parasite to the rest of the group? Is he at odds with his own team? You could say he’s not united in mind and thought because his actions caused the opposite outcome the group wanted. Well, that…