Any Given Sunday

The adage goes, “on any given Sunday, any team can beat any other team.” Apply this toward your health. Apply this toward your mindset. Just because your genetics or heredity say one thing, it doesn’t mean you can’t beat the odds. Just because you’ve been running a losing streak, it doesn’t mean you can’t flip the trend. Just because you’ve been on a winning streak, it doesn’t mean you can’t lose. Pride comes before the fall. The meek will inherit the earth. The factors involved in wins and losses extend far beyond the predicted significance of prior variables. Not just on any given Sunday, but on any given day, you can make a new possibility.
In history, we see it a lot. The 300 is a great example. Spartan numbers should’ve never held their position against Persian numbers. Moreover, when you study Ancient Greece, you find that Spartans weren’t even able to overtake the walls of their next-door neighbors, the Messenians. By Greek standards, the Spartans were not the toughest. They weren’t soft. They just weren’t the toughest. What are the odds of 300 guys standing their ground against 200,000 soldiers? But they did it. Heavy armor and strategic positioning accounted for a lot. Persians had light armor. Persians didn’t have home field advantage.

Any given Sunday.

The adage is evident in sports, because so often people have seen upsets. Front-runners falter. Underdogs destroy competitors. In sporting event statistics, no outcome percentage ever approaches 100, because focus, intent, and even physics can make things go sideways. You can’t ever really KNOW what EXACTLY will happen. Even the gambling and investment oracles have a long list of loser picks. The biggest gambling and investment winners have selected a lot of losers.

Any given Sunday.

Geneticists declared in 2018 that DNA and heredity have less to do with how long you will live than who you choose as a spouse/partner: https://www.genetics.org/content/210/3/1109. The team you come from has less predictive power than the team you’re making. Your past might’ve gotten you to the present. But your present is what will take you to the future.

Any given Sunday.

My mom always warned me about “joiners.” She would say that a lot of people make life decisions based on trying to be part of a group, aka “joiners”. It is a rule in Sociology, after all. People define themselves as a part of the group with which they perceive a connection, and AGAINST groups with which they perceive a schism. It drives a lot of groupthink. It wears down the individual. It directs perfectly good people to make perfectly awful choices.

Any given Sunday.

Lately, we’ve all seen people struggle with their loser pick. They forgot about Any Given Sunday. They forget about Any Given Tuesday. It’s as simple as that.

Don’t be a joiner; and there’s no problem. Outcomes don’t bother me, because I’m not a joiner. I don’t support strangers. If I make a pick or vote a way, that’s it. Done. I will criticize more harshly that same pick the very next second. They don’t get my loyalty. They don’t get my unwavering praise.

I don’t understand joiner mentality. I don’t jive with celebrity worship. But I also don’t cheer for sports teams. I don’t put a lot of stock in genetics. I don’t believe in destiny or fate or luck. I detest a lot of organizations, even if they stand for something worthy, simply because they erase individual thought. I don’t care for the follower culture of social media. I was more comfortable leaving large companies than being within them.

And if you are a joiner, that's fine. If you insist on fatalistic genetics and impossible destiny, be my guest. Just never forget that anything can change, anything can alter, any streak ends, any trend reverses, any set of circumstances may be different the very next moment.

Any given Sunday.