Submitted by: Michael Spindell, guest blogger
“For when the One Great Scorer comes
To mark against your name,
He writes – not that you won or lost –
But how you played the Game.”
by Grantland Rice
How many of us grew up with the paraphrase of these words ringing in our ears as we participated in all of the competitions that humans partake in. These sentiments represented the epitome of humans engaging in fair contests, the object of which was defining dominance in a particular field and/or activity. We were all supposed to be “fair”, “play by the rules”, honor our opponents and most of all treat them with respect. Much of this was first defined in Western Culture by the Code of Chivalry which not only defined how men hacked each other to death on the battlefield, but also how they were to treat the “fairer” (weaker) sex. As the merchant class rose and nobility declined, Chivalry was subsumed in Western Culture by the notion of “fair play”. That all of these concepts have been but hypocritical touchstones meant to add the veneer of human nobility, to human competition, is rarely admitted by those who promote competition for financial and/or political gain.
Thoughts of this came to me as I watched the Olympics this year, listening to the portentous palaver of the announcers, discussing the contests and the purported values behind them. Yes I felt tears of patriotic pride as Gabby Douglas won the gymnastics Gold Medal, but I also saw the pain on the face of Viktoria Komova, who “only” won the Silver Medal. Implicit was that the Russian gymnast had failed in her quest and that she would forever be marked by this failure. This is the hypocritical dichotomy that is pursued in all avenues of competitive human endeavor when reported upon by the media.
Humanity reached the top of the “food chain” by defeating the competition over eons of strife with other fierce predators. While there are still valid arguments on each side of the question as to how human society developed, whether in a spirit of cooperation, or as a rigid imposition of the will of the “leader”, we cannot question that we attained our status because of our predatory talents. Once the “order” of society was imposed humanity began to learn to sublimate battles to the death for proof of supremacy, into “contests” of talent. We learned to sort out our “hierarchy” through these contests and indeed they have developed into a wide range of competitions that most of us use to determine our places in the world. This is not a controversial idea, but even so I would like to take a step back from it and look at the obvious background of human competition that is missed as we “crown” our champions and pity those who could not measure up. The Olympic Movement is a very problematic one. I could go into its mixed history of bigotry, commercialism, deception and tragedy, but that is perhaps for another time.
What I want to explore is the short shrift given by the media to the incredible individual efforts made by so many people who have dedicated their lives to attaining the worldwide stage that the Olympics represent and yet have fallen short of being able to participate, much less attain medals. Since attaining its worldwide popularity the Olympics has bred the spirit of competition in various fields in all corners of the world. For events like gymnastics, or swimming, to even begin to think of getting to the Olympics requires a dedication in early childhood to endless hours of practice and competition on all levels. This is actually true of success in all sports and as the dedicated child grows the competition begins to “weed” out those who lack the talents and/or dedication to their chosen competitive field.
An eight year old that has beaten all those in her county at swim meets finds herself finishing last in a Statewide competition. She might shrug off that defeat and redouble her training efforts, possibly increasing her talents to the point that by High School she has become competitive Statewide, or she may simply adjust to the possibility that the “Olympic Dream” is not possible for her and go on to pursue other avenues towards her personal vision of success. Is only being the best swimmer in ones’ county a failure?
No one would have ever, at any stage of my life, have confused me with being an athlete. Yet I spent much of my childhood participating in all kinds of sports, though never on an organized basis. I have my memories of triumphs and my memories of defeats. I spent hours in solitary practice sessions learning to throw and field a ball off a brick wall. My place in the pecking order was determined in “pick-up” ball games, since I was always chosen near to last. As much as I desired to be considered “good” among my peers, I came to realize that for me being considered “fair” was a triumph. What of those I played with who were the “Captains” choosing, or the first choices? Some went on I suppose to play organized baseball in High School but none ever made it in college sports, or went on to play professionally. This is as it is for most people who engage in competition on all levels. It is but a special few that rise to the point where they can represent their nation on the world stage.
The question remaining in my mind, as these games draw to their conclusion, is whether those “losers” feel satisfaction in the fact that even though they’ve achieved no medals, their lifetime of effort was worth it? Do we really live in a world where it only matters “how you played the game”, or is it that only “winning” that counts? When you start so young to dedicate yourself to the achievement of success in sport does “failing” leave you with emptiness and recriminations?
Aside from sports our particular American culture is one that worships perceived “success”. This success can range from tangible achievements in given fields, the amassing of great wealth, political office, academic recognition and/or simply being born into a notable family. With the advent of the mass media we see that even appearing briefly on television can turn someone of little accomplishment into a “celebrity”. Jonathan Turley, the creator of this blog is a legitimate “celebrity”. He appears regularly on TV, is renowned for his championing of the Constitution via both the courts and in the press. To all of us who sojourn here, he is well-deservedly famous and a figure of respect for all that he has accomplished. Yet with it all, Professor Turley is nowhere near as famous a celebrity as the “Octomom”, Paris Hilton, or the Kardashian family. With respect to the Kardashian’s, remember it was their patriarch, the lawyer Robert Kardashian, who put them into a position to achieve fame by being O.J. Simpson’s original attorney in the murder case. In the Celebrity Fame Game, all that our Professor has going for him is defending a family made famous by being polygamous on a reality show. The quite tangible accomplishments of his career are well recognized by his peers, his students and his followers, yet it is doubtful that he will ever be offered his own “reality” show, or even discussed on “Entertainment Tonight”.
At my advanced age, I can truthfully say that I look back on my life so far as a successful one. In my own particular terms I’ve played the game well, despite lack of wealth, celebrity and/or outside recognition of achievement. Perhaps though I was never driven, or drove myself to achieve anything more than a woman to love and the fulfillment of children resulting from that love. To be perfectly honest I’ve always had an arrogance about myself to the extent that I’ve always liked and believed in me, so I’ve never really cared what other people thought of me. I would hope that most people would feel that way about themselves, but my training and my career have shown that not to be the case. When I see a sixteen year old singer in front of millions of people on “American Idol” saying that winning that contest is the most important thing in their life, I believe that singer and I grieve for that singer. I understand now that outward trappings of success often mask inner pangs of longing that will never find solace, or peace.
This is then my tribute to all of those whose losses the mass media culture decries as failure. In my opinion it is “how you play the game”, since in the end as mortal beings there is little comfort in the immortality of records, money or other achievements. Perhaps it is that belief though that has ensured my lack of outward fame, wealth and celebrity. If only I tried harder, dedicated myself more and refused to accept losing I could have been a contender. Since I’ve already admitted my arrogance in not caring about your judgment of me, perhaps you might give your own judgment of yourself, or whether you think playing the game well, is just as good as winning.
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
Obviously, this is all my personal opinion.
Nobody is perfect, nobody is flawless. Not physically, mentally, or emotionally. For me, what that means is there is no real champion or king, there are just certain moments when one executes better than any one else, and sometimes moments when you feel you have executed perfectly.
I am a decent darts player. Not even a regional champion, but once, on a $20 bet with a stranger that I could, I stepped to the line and threw a regulation bullseye in a single throw. I was with friends, and … they … roared.
I have earned many hundreds of thousands of dollars in my life, but that $20 and the roar of my friends when I nailed that shot stands out in my memory as a shining moment in my life, about a third of a century after I made it. I am not the best darts player in the world, but for one moment it felt like it.
To me Life is made of such moments, when you were successful, you were “the one.” It happens in business, in romance, in research, in parenting, in sports, in games, in spontaneous humor, and the whole reason for pursuing what you are good it is to cultivate those moments, to collect them, to celebrate them, to remember.
My nephew (and adoptive brother) is now a tournament pool player, a champion. He started playing at the age of 7. but here is his “$20 story” to match mine: At 11, he liked fishing, and one weekend I took him to the lake for that; we rented a boat, caught a few fish. After fishing we found a restaurant on the lake, and they had a pay pool table. Four local college kids were drinking beer and playing the table, and my nephew says, “gimme five dollars.” He took the five dollars to the table, played call shot 8-ball against each of them in turn, and just destroyed them, he was running four and five balls in a row. Fortunately, these boys found this all hilariously entertaining, and paid their bets. My nephew walked out with $25. Because I told him to keep the $5 I staked him with, the show was worth it.
That was a moment for him, for me, and I hope for those four boys in the bar. Life is made of such moments, and such feelings.
I think it is far easier to accept defeat if you understand that everybody, without exception, suffers defeats. Defeat and pain can (hopefully) be forgotten, to me Life is about the beautiful moments you cannot forget.
Mike asks:
As far as I am concerned that sums up the essence of the core of our two civilizations.
I am reminded of the song lyrics “caterpillar sheds its skin to find a butterfly within” (Donovan).
Like your question as to whether playing a game well is sufficient to, for instance, convert the proverbial worm into a beautiful flying work of art, the answer is still a mystery to us after all these years.
The institutions of our two civilizations rarely admit of it:
(Scientific American). Thus, I would have to say that most anything we do as a species that is composed of “eastern civilization” vs. “western civilization” evinces very poor judgment.
The reason, inter alia, is because our mutual interface is a game rather than a form of life composed of love of our fellow civilization.
Our essence is a game of exaltation rather than a mysterious yet fervent love that wants the other civilization to succeed even as we also succeed.
Olympics, these days, have been politicized. For example, last year Iran objected to the official logo of Olympics. This year Israel and its lobby group tried to forceIOC president to observe one minute silence in the memory of Israeli athelete killed as result of Mossad’s false flag operation in Munich. Then a Tunisian athelete refuse to compete against Israeli athelete while a Lebanese athelet refused practice in front of Israeli team.
However, in end Iran won 8 medals and Israel none which made Israelis so made that there media has reported today the Israel will attack Iran within a few months.
http://rehmat1.com/2011/10/26/2012-london-olympics-and-mossad/
Reality for Olympians is probably a bit different, in evolutionary outcome terms, than for much more inactive people.
Anyone who does certain types of repetitive, intense activity changes their genes:
(Why You Can Change Your Genes). That is the opposite of orthodox genetics of not too very long ago.
It would seem, then, that those who play Olympic games intensely from young children until adulthood will change their genetic makeup.
How they play the game may in fact determine those genetic changes to some degree.
One has to wonder if warmongers will develop genetic differences when compared to people of peace.
Malisha, would love to read your son’s book. He showed wisdom at a young age. I agree with Blouise – he should make it available as a published children’s book.
How athlete’s deal with not being the “best” depends a great deal on the kind of support they get from family.
I participated because I loved playing. I was also fairly good – for high school. I was competitive and winning was better than second or third, but I learned fairly early that when it came to running, I was the rabbit. Short legs just cannot compete with long legs that move as fast but cover more ground. In basketball, I was quick and adept at stealing the ball, deadly shot from outside, and got killed if I went under the basket. I wasn’t a high scorer but by stealing the ball, I messed up the opposition offense and one or two good shots from outside and the defense had to open up. I loved playing and joined a company team while in my 20’s. No one pushed me to be better in sports, but my ex told me repeatedly that I was “stupid” for playing. It was hard to go out running or playing basketball after a hard day of work when I had to put up with being “stupid”. I finally gave it up. (Bad decision – I gave up the wrong thing).
One brother was soured on sports when, in little league play, dad decided to give him a lesson how to slide better immediately after brother made the game winning hit. No congratulations for job well done, just you can do better at something that you didn’t do to perfection earlier in the game. Another brother was pushed hard to be a field goal kicker. He was very good and was offered a scholarship which he turned down. All the pushing soured him. He hung up his cleats after the last high school game and never played again. Another brother was a wrestler and good enough to win at the high school state level. He was self-driven and completely ignored. No one from the family even attended his meets. Dad played baseball and football, but looked down on wrestling. I think one or two of my brothers eventually picked up golf.
So much of who we are is determined by how we are treated by our families. Athletes who compete at the most rigorous levels, and who survive intact, win or lose, must be self-driven and supported by their families, win or lose. It’s families that can help them realize that they have value in just being.
Every day I bury myself in my favorite sport. Besides writing random comments on various forums that could probably be best left stuck in my head, my only hobby for the last twenty six years has been boxing. Often, I revel in my glory years, when I was still boxing competitively, and was in terrific physical shape. My amateur record, was, uh, not stellar, to say the least. I competed in the heavyweight class from age fifteen through twenty, and had exactly three wins. I couldn’t have cared less and still care nothing for anyone who thought little of my boxing endeavors. My friends used to wonder why I put myself through the hours and hours of relentless training, dieting, and bruising when I couldn’t win. My speed was good, my power was good, my reflexes, reach, and depth perception were extremely lacking. My answer is best paraphrased by one of my favorite Neil Gaiman characters, the Leprechaun in American Gods. “Why do you want to fight me?” “For the pure unholy f*cking joy of it.” I also pointed out, usually to my brothers, that they were welcome to try their boxing skill relative to mine. They declined, for some odd reason. The glory for me was in the striving and competing, in pitting myself against people who worked as hard or harder than myself. I used to tell my brothers that the only person who could teach me how to fight were people who were better than me at fighting, so there was little point in beating someone up who couldn’t win against me. For me it was always the constant improvement. For me it’s always about the glory of the competition, not the results. I love American Football, MMA, hockey, rugby, AR football, and any other sport where the principle objective is violent domination of the opponent, and I will as happily cheer the worst team as the best, because it’s the love of the game that makes these people keep coming after it, the pure unholy f*cking joy of throwing yourself into the mix.
The Willard meanwhile, has a spouse over there, trying to be a countess or a countessa, with her show horse. This just goes to show that The Willard chased the wrong tail early in life and we might be barking up the wrong tree putting Willard and Miss Horseplay on our proverbial throne.
We dogs chase the ball for ya, point at the birdies, catch the frisbee. But when we want to show you the spirit of sport and bring you down to earth and behold dog, we chase our tails.
Blouise, thanks for your condolences. People out there treated me as one of the mourners although I’m not related to her. There were lots of quasi-religious services (Marjorie wasn’t completely sure whether she was Jewish or Buddhist or both, and there was an interesting mix). My habit is to sit/stand in the back row and move my lips as if I remember the Hebrew, but in this case I got moved into the front row all the time so I couldn’t “fake” it any more and had to just stand still and look ignorant. It made me laugh to realize that, as a result of the honor, I wasn’t able to be pretentious at my friend’s services! She would also have laughed at that.
Slarti, I already had my full day (my friend died recently). So I think I’ll go to sleep now! Thanks for the lullabye!
Idealist, I had never even HEARD of CBT when my kid wrote that book! And later when I did read about CBT, I didn’t actually think about that book or about his experiences with the prize (by the way it was a stuffed doggie and my kid already had about a dozen stuffed animals on his bed) when I read about it. The link only appeared now!
Malisha, I have so much, I am content with the little I have.
Your comments today are awing and wonderful. Thank you
Mike Spindell, thanks again for another beautiful column.
Slarti, that study made me think, and made me laugh.
Recently I was speaking with a virtual stranger (over the phone) and he suddenly asked me WHY I had tried to help someone who had no call on my sympathy. He and I got into a talk about it! I said I always felt that I had so much more than others, why shouldn’t I try to help others? He was kind of astounded because he knew that, on the cold record, I had approximately nothing. Then I discovered, and simultaneously explained, that I was what I call a “post-Holocaust Jew” who was raised on stories of the destruction of the Jews of Europe. I always thought I had enough because I had food, shelter, clothing, and nobody burning me, beating me, gassing me, killing me. No matter what I had or lacked, I was so much better off than I would have been, had I been born ten years earlier in a different place.
But I never tried to accumulate wealth or “get ahead” in life and I realized that by comparing myself to people who had nothing, I felt already-rich. Others my age compared themselves to people who had EVERYTHING (seen on TV) and they were always striving to get as much!
It’s kind of a joke, at this point in time — I’m 65. Had I always compared myself with the wealthy and powerful on TV rather than the nameless folks in mass graves in Poland, how much different things might be now!
Malisha said: “Slarti, that study made me think, and made me laugh.”
According to Jimmy Valvano (giving his final speech at the inaugural ESPY awards), if you think, you laugh, and you cry in a day, you’ve had a full day—you’re two-thirds of the way there (and I’m honored that I could help).
I have the good fortune of having a friend that, like you, manages to help other people even though most would say he has very little himself. Part of what drives me to succeed is the desire to validate his faith in me and, in some small measure, repay the help he’s given me. I’m sure there are many people who feel the same about you…
Remember, we’ll all be successful if we remember 3 things: Our families, our religion, and the Green Bay Packers*.
* if you don’t get the reference, watch the linked speech starting at about 3:20… No, scratch that, watch the whole thing.
Malisha,
My condolences for the death of your friend. I wondered where you were and am sorry to hear that you were busy with such sadness.
Yeah, I’ll speak with him about it this evening. Maybe he should rewrite it simply to save his mom from the frustration of trying to find something else that is missing…good incentive.
Malisha,
“…..and that he DID like himself for doing it, so the value of the prize became less and less as he assigned more value to other things.”
thanks for the CBT lesson.
Malisha,
If you can’t find it, ask him to rewrite it as a children’s book for publication. It could be a great teaching tool and depending on the setting, quite an adventure.
Malisha,
Now I have read yours. Yes, I forgot sex. How could I after a course in evolutional biology. I wrote recently on Bower birds competing for mates by creating the most attractive nest. One example.
As for testerone, women have it too, just not as much.
Thank god for that, or perhaps not.
Is it unnatural as some contend that women chase men.
I think not. The chasing has always occurred from both sides, but visibly it may have appeared to be a
man’s role to chase.
And here where the girls do, makes for their deciding consciously what they are looking for and taking responsibility for it, and not just any mate will do.
But who am I to opine. I am but an observer, after years of fumbling.
Great son you have. Be proud. Must be a great mom behind.
Another great article Mike!
I saw a piece on the TV news talking about a study which showed that, in general, bronze medalists were much happier with their medal that silver medalists—Those that got the silver tended to think about how close they’d come to gold and those that got the bronze tended to think about how close they’d come to nothing (although, as your article shows, just being a part of the olympics is a pretty impressive achievement on its own).
Personally, I think that if you set goals that are important to you (too often we can get caught up in other peoples expectations and goals) and do your utmost to attain them then, succeed or fail, you’ll have nothing to regret.
MikeS,
“…guess what, most of those I play with are significantly better than me. So what, it’s still fun for me.”
Your competitors are the elite of the elite. Those who were outstanding, have probably done it in the years since, and who have kept the form and had the health breaks. That explains that—-perhaps.