Volleyball: A Sport for Stoics

As summer hits Chicago, droves of people flock Lake Michigan’s beaches for outdoor volleyball - including me! I’ve been in love with the sport since I was a teenager and, in the recent years, have come to some reflections of my love for the sport - metaphors to a philosophy called Stoicism I learned while taking philosophy classes in New Acropolis Chicago. I believe that if the ancient Stoics played a modern sport, they would have played volleyball!

When you first play the game of volleyball, the rules may appear to be simple. There are two sides divided by a net and all you have to do is get the ball from one side to another - the premise is child’s play. Then, one learns how one can handle the ball - you’re not able to just catch it and throw it back (though we - from beginner to advanced - have done it at some point). There are generally three ways to contact the ball - a bump, where one hits the ball with both wrists joined together, a set, where only the fingertips can touch (and only for a split second or so) and a spike, where one can hit the ball with a raised arm swing. After learning these, one realizes how difficult it is to control the ball with these limited actions - and what is a core skill of volleyball - control.

In time, you practice these skills and you learn how to control the ball, and to varying degrees, you get better. However, volleyball is not played in a vacuum - it is a team sport. You realize that it is not just you who is learning these skills but five other people in your team as well. In a game, it is not just you who handles the ball and if it is difficult to bring order into an inanimate object, it is even more difficult to bring order within a group of human beings! It is not unusual for people to collide or miscommunication to arise -it is a fundamental challenge inherent to team sports.

You also cannot ignore the other side - the opponent team. They are also a group of people learning how to control the ball individually, and learning how to bring order into their group - just like you! However, aside from how you send the ball from your side to theirs, you really do not have anything else to do with the other team - just people you are aware of.

Now, what does this have to do with Stoicism?

Stoic philosophy started in ancient Greece around 301 BC with Zeno of Citium and declined in popularity after the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher king who wrote the book Meditations (around 180CE). However, it is experiencing a kind of renaissance today - and for good reason. Many of the concepts the Stoics believed and lived with are as relevant to them as to us today.

“Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and in one word, whatever are not our own actions” - Epictetus, Enchridion I

The Three Spheres of Action

The Stoics believed in three Spheres of Action that can help us identify and organize our world and the actions we can take in relation to them.

The first Sphere is what we have in our direct control.

In the quote above, Epictetus provides us with examples that are distinctly ours - our own opinions, desires, emotions, expectations. In the game of volleyball, it would be our control of the ball itself. We may feel that some things, like our emotions, are out of that sphere but like in sport, we may have trouble in the beginning but with time and practice, we will get better.

The second Sphere of Action is the Sphere of Influence

The elements of our world that surrounds us that we do not have direct control over but that we have some effect on based on our words and actions. This could be our family, our workplace, our friends, our neighbors and our volleyball teammates. We live with them but what they do is not up to us - they are their own players with their own choices. It is common to get frustrated when they don’t do what we expect them to do but the Stoics teach that this frustration comes from our illusion that we have control over them. In reality, we only have influence. Our volleyball teammates are the same, they have their own ball to control and skills they are practicing and we may get frustrated when they do something we think is wrong but ultimately, it is outside of us. Instead, when we understand we only have influence, we can conserve our energies and focus on what we can control - ourselves - and offer our influence to others - an encouraging smile, a kind word, and when asked for - helpful advice.

The third Sphere of Action is the Sphere of Awareness.

The opponent team in our volleyball metaphor is the wider world that we are aware of, but ultimately, is out of our grasp. We live in a world where information travels from one corner of the world to another but our actions do not. It is a lesson in humility - that we are individual human beings that have a finite amount of energy that we have to learn to use wisely. However, this is not to say that we should disconnect from the world. The Stoics believed that man is a social being and has responsibilities towards maintaining harmony in a society. Their teachings only emphasize that we have to recognize where we can have impact and where we can only have awareness of.

The Stoics believed in living an ethical life, starting with ourselves and our actions.

Starting with ourselves, we can expend our energies where it has the most effect - within the sphere of our direct control. In the same way, when we play and practice volleyball (or really, any other sport), we can often get distracted by what is going on around us - the mistakes of our teammates, the actions of the opposing team - that we overlook our own areas to improve. There are even cases where our own “overinterest” on others is a reflection of how much we need to work on ourselves. Our intentions are often good but they may be misdirected - our investment of energy may not find the return we expect if we invest them carelessly.

In truth, Stoicism teaches us the virtue of efficiency - efficiency that transforms our self-work and practice to becoming better volleyball players and perhaps, even becoming better people.

“You participate in a society by your existence. Then participate in its life through your actions—all your actions. Any action not directed toward a social end (directly or indirectly) is a disturbance to your life, an obstacle to wholeness, a source of dissension. “ - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Written by Vincent Fernandez

A student of New Acropolis, of life, and of one’s self, Vincent believes that philosophy can be approached through the many facets of daily living - whether through playing volleyball, singing karaoke, reading historical fiction books or cooking food. His recent foray into writing is just that; an attempt to practice philosophy by way of reflection and journey into the labyrinthine maze of the mind. 

“There are many paths to Truth” - Vincent Fernandez