Empathy-Schmempathy

It is true that we really don't know how people feel until we walk around in their shoes. I learned two big things in the last 1.5 weeks, relating to volleyball. It seems trivial to be mentioning this, but if I am going to learn anything out at a bar, it might as well be something useful.

I was a substitute referee last week, and after that experience, I will never complain to a ref again. Not that I ever did, but now I really won't! It takes a lot of concentration, and it is hard to see everything going on on the court. I withstood hate stares on certain calls, inpatient players when I would forget to flip the score and eyes rolling from some younger players used to WIAA high school rules. I never would've got in a ref's face before, and now I certainly won't.

Last night I subbed for a team in the league I formerly played in, and I had to pass and hit middle. I haven't done this in a LONG time, and I'm not a hitter. I'm not sure if I was sluggish, if they were serving really tough or if my skills had weakened that much, but I struggled. I was shanking passes left and right, passing short, toward the net. I wanted to bury my head in the sand and not come back out. I am a setter, and I did that on my old team. Setters often get frustrated when the passing is bad, but I learned that the passers/hitters get equally as frustrated. It's not an easy thing to do, and passing in quads (four people on the court) is much more difficult than in sixes (six people on the court). There is a lot more court to cover. I'm hoping I might have been sluggish, because when I have passed in other games, it hasn't been as bad as last night.

So....I got to stand in a ref's shoes and in a passer's shoes. I learned that both roles need empathy. Some of those refs might be doing that after a long day at work (as I did), so their minds not be as sharp by the time the 10 pm game comes around. Some middles passers in quads need encouragement and support if they are not doing as great as they want. We all need empathy. Hopefully I can continue to be more empathetic in other aspects of life as well.