Be Curious, Not Judgemental

The title is a quote misattributed to Walt Whitman. No one can associate the phrase with any specific person, but I'm going to give Jason Sudeikis credit for it.  Sudeikis is the creator of the Apple TV series "Ted Lasso" and also plays the title character. The series has received both public and critical acclaim garnering a number of industry awards for their first two seasons. 

I didn't discover the show until the end of last year, and only because there was a connection between the main character and the head football coach at my alma mater. It seems that Sudeikis, whose character Ted Lasso is a college football coach, consulted Jim Harbaugh to develop a portrayal of a successful college coach. While discussing this in an interview, Harbaugh referred to a scene that's gone viral, known by many as 'the darts scene' or 'be curious' and can be found on youtube using either of those as a search phrase. I invite you to watch it.

The scene makes more sense if you understand the following before watching it, especially if you see the scene with the game already in progress:

1) Ted Lasso is a college football coach who was hired to coach a (soccer) football team in England;

2) The owner of that team has gone through a messy divorce and is motivated solely by revenge. She got the team as part of the divorce agreemen, and the motive behind hiring Ted is to sabotage any chances of the team being successful;

3) The ex-husband enjoys antagonizing the ex-wife who initiated the divorce proceedings, so much so that he's bought a minor share of the team in the name of his current girlfriend/future fiance, which allows him to be in the owner's box for all games. The plan is to conduct interviews lambasting the ex-wife for the poor performance of the team. In his own words: "It will be relentless.";

This sets you up if you watch a video version that's about three and half minutes long; there are two scenes spliced together.

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Hopefully you have taken the time to watch the scene. If your response was anything like mine, you watched the scene over and over about five times. It was cathartic for me on a lot of different levels. 

First off, it was fun to see Rupert get his comeuppance. He's the only obvious villain in the entire series. But it's Ted's soliloquy that gets the main press on this scene. And it scored on two main levels. I've gone through life feeling misunderstood and I've seldom felt like I ever had a chance to even voice my thoughts and/or motivation for anything that might have transpired. It took some time for me to recognize how much shame I'd retained over that when the reality was that their behavior had been judgmental. Then I was prompted to examine how my lack of curiosity in many situations may have resulted in judgmental behavior on my part. I've never bought into the concept of new year's resolutions, but this year, I've made a conscious choice to try and be more curious. 

Just watch the show. You don't have to rely on my endorsement: Rotten Tomatoes gives the series a 95% on its tomatometer. The show has back to back Emmy wins for seasons 1 & 2 for best comedy series and has won a total of about 75 different awards.