Recently I read a book.
This book was about Australian aborigine culture.
The man who wrote the book, has lived for several years with, Australian aborigines and he's also done a lot of research.
And he told one story in particular, which I found very interesting, both as an expression of, the culture which the aborigines had, and also in relation to my own personal life.
In my personal life I like to play soccer.
And I've played soccer, since I think, I was six years old on teams.
And even before then, I have pictures which I can find from when I was two and three years old, and I have a little ball at my feet.
So... Here was a story combining soccer and then this,very interesting culture of the Australian aborigines.
So the Australian aborigines didn't invent soccer.
And they only, were introduced to soccer when, Europeans came to Australia, in I think, the seventeen hundreds.
And when the ah Europeans came, they saw how the, aborigines lived and they wanted the aborigines to, live more like Europeans and do things the way Europeans,
do things, like how Europeans grow food or build houses.
And so the Europeans also wanted the Australians to play soccer, because that's something which the Europeans liked very much and they felt it would be good if, the Australians also played soccer.
So for instance, when one of the missionaries from Europe, one of the, um, priests or ministers, I'm not sure which, came to Australia, he would take some boys and and he would teach them how to play soccer.
He would give them a ball, I suppose, and show them how to make a goal, maybe out of trees, or maybe, metal, or maybe just uh some rocks on the ground, I don't know.
And make two teams and, teach them how to kick the ball around, and pass it and, get into the goal, I suppose, that's how you teach someone how to play soccer.
However... In soccer, you usually have one team that scores more goals than the other.
Sometimes, they both score the same amount, but most of the time... um, somebody usually scores more and somebody scores less.
And then you have a winner and a loser.
However when the aborigine boys began to play soccer, they learned all the rules except for this last one of having a winner and a loser.
They actually changed the rules, so that, every game would end with both teams having the same amount of goals.
There would never be a winner and a loser.
And they did this because in their culture, which is, many many years old, I think many hundreds of thousands of years old, that's an incredibly long time, they didn't have competition like this.
They didn't think that it was, beneficial or helpful to have games where there was a winner and a loser.
So when they played soccer, they had no winners and losers.
They played every game so that everybody had the same number of goals.
And to me this is very beautiful.