Winning

Winning is good, but playing is much more important. Every day, it seems, I hear sports figures, coaches, players, and fans, extol the virtues of winning. You too, I’m sure, have heard “Winning is what it is all about”. “Winning is not the most important thing it is the only thing”. I submit to you, those people have it all wrong; playing is more important than winning. If you don’t play you will never experience winning or losing. Spectators experience neither.

Now let me ask you, how many winners are there in the NFL? Well, you have winners and losers each weekend, but on Super Bowl weekend you have only one winner. What does this picture tell you? It says that one week you may be a loser and the next week you may be a winner. There is, however, only one winner in the quest for the national championship. At the end of the Super Bowl, is the only winner the National Champion team and every other team is a looser? Well that weekend only one team was the winner of the National Championship, but the rest of the teams were not losers, and what about the other 364 days of the year? In any game, if you play long enough you will be on the loosing side as well as the winning side. And which side you end up on any specific week says nothing in particular but the results of the final score. It does, however, say something about your character that you played the game. You have faced the potential of not prevailing on that specific day. By facing your opponent you have accepted the challenge and are willing to lose, if it happens, that day. There will be other days. So if you loose, shake it off, so to speak, and try again. The key is not to dwell on the loss by taking it personal, but to keep practicing and playing, honing your skills to take advantage of the opportunity when it arises to beat your opponent or conquer your challenge. If you play you will, at one time or another, experience both winning and losing just by engaging in the chase of the ball, the run against the clock, the swing of the club, or the crack of the bat.

It may sound a bit hokey, but spectators are much more plentiful than players. You and I know many spectators who never engage. Of course, we are all spectators at one time or another, but it does take some energy to enter the fray and to take on the experience that may lead to loosing which is, for many, another word for failure. But loosing is not failure; it is only not being able to prevail that particular game day. Tomorrow is a new day and a new game. So don’t fear loosing, fear not playing.