Mortar 2, Sincerity (Bot9 #130)
Sincerity - Mortar 2, John Wooden's Pyramid of Success by Keith Wahl
While many people are familiar with the bricks of Wooden's Pyramid of Success, fewer people are familiar with the work Wooden continued to do on his seminal work. As Wooden continued to learn, he continued to add to the Pyramid through the "Mortar" qualities - the things that flow between the bricks. Wooden said this:
"To hold a structure of bricks (or blocks) together, the mason applies mortar around each layer. In the Pyramid of Success, character qualities bond the 15 building blocks, thus symbolizing mortar. These character qualities actually run throughout the Pyramid and help us advance toward the apex."
The second of these Mortar qualities is Sincerity. Wooden envisioned the context of Sincerity to exist on the base of the Pyramid as the glue holding Friendship, Loyalty, Cooperation, and Team Spirit together. Being a sincere person allows us to hold and bind together. Wooden said, "once a person knows our word, character and steadfastness will withstand the tests of life, a firm friendship can be established and maintained."
In many ways, the World Series "curses" that were broken by the Boston Red Sox, Chicago White Sox, and San Francisco Giants in recent years caused baseball fans to lose a sense of Sincerity. The Red Sox hadn't won a World Series since they traded Babe Ruth and were left to suffer. The White Sox had not won since the infamous Black Sox scandal. The Giants had failed to win since moving to the West Coast from New York. Now that those long-running stories played themselves out through World Championships, a level of Sincerity in the fandom of those teams has been lost.
However, as we just witnessed, the Chicago Cubs are still playing out the narrative of the "Billy Goat" curse. In spite of the "prophecy" set forth in the film Back to the Future II, the Cubs were swept out of the playoffs by the New York Mets, landing one step short of the World Series once again.
Cubs fans are sincere. They have established and maintained a firm foundation of Sincerity through many years of testing. Their word, character, and steadfastness hold true in the Friendly Confines of Wrigley Field.
This week, let us work on our Sincerity towards our fellow man as Cub fans have modeled Sincerity for us through the years.