She sees my motivations as being mainly external, specifically external present and external future. The external present motivation would be something like: I work at this because I want my team to win the BUDA SCL tournament in August. The external future motivation is a little more abstract, but it would be something like: I work at this because I want to hone the leadership and communication skills that will be useful in future work related endeavors.
I cannot disagree with either one of these motivations. They are both valid. I do want the Co-op to win the SCL tournament. And, I do want to improve my leadership and communication skills. However, I believe that both of the external motivations are actually ancillary to my genuine motivations, which are much more internal.
In saying this, I do not mean to imply that my wife is externally focused. It's simply a matter of perspective. It is impossible to know another person's internal motivations. They're hazy and idiosyncratic. External motivations, however, are simpler to determine.
The way I see it, the 6+ hours per week I spend thinking about and playing games and practice are spent for their own sake. I don't think about practice and strategy and games because my thoughts are going to lead to a tournament victory. I think about them because I enjoy thinking about them. Will clear thinking in those areas lead to a tournament victory? Hopefully. Probably. But, that isn't the point.
Similarly, the leadership and communication challenges that are posed by trying to captain 20 guys, run successful practices, win games, and make sure that people are satisfied with the experience are not just trial runs for real world problem solving. In many ways, I think that problems within a team or on the field are more real than problems in a business. In business, people are paid for their time. On our team, we pay for the privilege of working. In short, nobody has to be here. There are no contracts, no bonuses, and no families depending on us to play. Most of us sacrifice in order to play.
Doing a good job as a captain will very likely come in handy in the future sure. But, once again, that isn't the point. If that were my motivation, I would just be bored. I'm motivated to improve as a captain because I enjoy it. It's the same reason we work on marking during practice. Are any of us going to use those skills in a professional context? Hell no. So, why do we work so hard to get better? Because, why not.
As my mother used to say: if you're going to do something, you might as well do it right. I've only slightly modified it to: if you're going to do something, you might as well do it for it's own sake.
