Just Thinkin’ -
November of a Presidential election year seems to get me thinking about winning and losing. Well, Presidential election years and high school football playoffs.
Over the years, much has been written about winning. Few words have been devoted to losing.
Over the years, I have espoused the merits of competitive athletics in our middle and secondary schools. I do so because I strongly believe in their educational value. We are taught about winning. We are taught about losing. We are taught that win or lose, there is a next day. We are taught there is a relationship between effort and outcome. While it is often paraphrased, Thomas Jefferson said it most elegantly, “I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.”
As with history, English and math, students don’t learn equally. Some learn easily and some don’t. All learn.
In the short-haul, I don’t believe we can ever make losing feel as good as winning. But it is an invaluable lesson to learn failure isn’t fatal, losing isn’t lethal.
A famous basketball coach said, “You learn more from losing than winning. You learn how to keep going.” I don’t know about this. I believe each has unique lessons to teach us. I am big on the keeping your head down and keep on going thing.
Remember Thomas Edison’s quote, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that don’t work.”
In football, a player wins or loses on each snap of the ball. I can’t tell you how many offensive lineman I have told, “You don’t have to pancake him, just get in his way and stay in his way as long as you can.”
Each football position asks for a different type of young man. The best running backs I ever coached would have made lousy offensive linemen.
The high school playoffs have arrived. In Oklahoma, half of the football teams made the playoffs. Half did not. We will keep cutting the halves in half until only State Champions remains. One winner and 31 losers? No. Every player has learned from playing. We compare ourselves with others and we compete.
We are fundamentally a society of Christian capitalist. Christianity encourages cooperation. Capitalism encourages competition. Cognitive dissonance allows us to simultaneously hold these competing views and not be troubled by the inconsistency. Teamwork, sportsmanship and competition. Winning and losing.
Not all winning is about humans and their games. My recent reading has taken me into the first half of the 19th century. There are multiple references to mindboggling swarms of mosquitoes. While I was sitting on the porch last evening, I swatted a few of the little critters that landed on my arm. The mosquitoes are winning still. “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” Robert Frost
