When two minuses do not make a positive

As the title of this blog says, it is about finance, politics and such. I guess today is the "and such" day.

From very young, I love maths. I love how everything makes sense and with rules, everything is in order. The algebra was (and is still) fascinating and solving them was a bliss. And one of the fundamental mathematical rules is that a minus, multiplied with another minus will result in a positive, in other words, two minuses will result in a positive number.

I also love sports, in particular basketball. I am fortunate enough to still be able to play (albeit at a much slower pace) the game at my age and since I have been playing the game since I was 13, that would have made it a a good 28 years of amateur dribbling. During my school days, I guess I was kinda competitive, earning half and full colours from my schools. But that was it.

Being a competitive person I would put so much effort in my game, and in particular in the offense when you attack the opponent and the basket. Well that was when I get to score and have my name on the score sheet and help my team win. That was my focus.

I was so driven to score that at one stage, i got very frustrated when I failed to make the shot or missed a lay up; so frustrated that i would pause and shook my head at the mistake and failure of the attempt. That was when my coach pulled me out of one of my games.

He pulled me aside and said, "Yazdi, two wrongs do not make a right". It means that while I may have 'wronged' in failing to make the easy lay-up, I committed another wrong by pausing to lament my loss because as my pause allowed the opponent to attack my team without me hustling back to defend.

Well, what I find years later is that the same advice is applicable to life in general. In life, we will be bound to face failures whether it was due to our mistake or the mistake of others. The failure is in a way a 'wrong', a negative, a minus. However, instead of pausing your life to lament the 'wrong' of the failure, we should quickly look ahead and make sure the the immediate next move is the right one. For example, if we lose our job, we should not spend time lamenting on the loss; but instead immediately focus and work on the defensive of getting another job or fixing whatever made you lose your job in the first place (so that you don't lose it again the next time).

Well, I still participate in basketball tournaments with a bunch of youngsters (we need the fast legs) and my advice to them is "be careful how you play basketball as it could end up being how you live your life". In life, and actually in games too, it is not winning the basketball tournament that is important; what is really important is to have a winning attitude since that could help you win the tournament of life.

Play hard, play smart.