Fairness and justice is pure fiction.

Every few weeks, I take up the role of ‘commissaire’ on a Sunday club race. My job is to ensure that the racing is fair and safe. And this tends to result in my hearing of complaints post-race about rider behaviour.

And I am supposed to keep scores and make a fair judgement…. Something that I am ill equipped to do.

As we go through life, we tend to collect ‘scores that we have to settle…’

Scoring tends to feature prominently in how we live our lives. There is a score to every type of game we play. Singles rate ‘SCORING’ fairly high on their weekend agenda. And even music has a score.

I have a slight leaning towards the belief of ‘Karma’ – although I know that the whole concept is flawed. Karma relies on the fact that someone is keeping score (specifically YOUR score)…

When in fact, the only one who keeps your score is yourself….and any other scores that involve you (as kept by others) – is only to make things interesting for them.

There is no grand register that keeps score of every human being – past present or future…Such a register would make Google’s huge search database seem like a drop of water in the oceans of the world. It is just not possible for someone even as powerful as GOD to administer such a register….especially if there is no reason for it.

Life happens by moments. As a racing cyclist in the heat of battle in a peloton, I have moments. And during those moments, I get to make decisions (and sometimes, the decision seems to be taken off my hands). Once those moments happen, it is never repeated. Keeping score only provide a memory of what happened. It has no weight to affect the scales of justice – which themselves are not real.

But in a world fixated by measuring things, keeping score is built into our DNA. Life in this world would lose one of its greatest dimensions if we did not keep score.

I do my business and personal financial accounts. It is the money scoring game. I remember all the times that Shirley forgot my birthday (and the times that I forgot hers). But no one else is keeping track of these the way I do. My scores are just part of the games I play and it does not need to be uploaded to a grand central register for settlement.

When you turn up for racing  on a Sunday, just remember that the commissaire is not there to settle your scores. The commissaires will not help you get even with another rider. That should never be their job, because they do not keep that style of scoring sheet.

Things happen in racing and none of it is anyone’s fault. Throw a bunch of racing cyclists together and you will see a multitude of styles and abilities…We have ex-pros, state and national champions together with no-name amateurs all fighting for a chance of a $50 prize. It does not matter how many medals you have on your dressing table. It makes no difference to the outcome of the race for everyone else…

By all means keep your own scores – but rest assured that they will evaporate into thin air the moment you leave this world.