As I wrote in yesterday’s post, the goal of being “the best” is problematic because it is externally driven, elusive, and temporal. Olympic athletes sustain unexpected injuries or come down with the flu and are unable to compete -- what happens to their goal of being the best in the world? Are they now failures?
Some would say “yes,” I suspect, particularly those in the sports world where competition seems to be everything. I live in the Boston area, where Red Sox fans are, well, fanatical. We lived through the Curse, so we know and accept failure. Members of Red Sox Nation are fiercely loyal but harshly critical, ready to blame and slow to forgive.
Can you say “Bill Buckner”?
What happened in the 1986 World Series (when the ball rolled between Buckner’s legs) won’t stay in 1986. Boston Magazine, for example, ran two stories -- ”Leave It to Buckner” by John Wolfson and “Thanks for the Memories” by Rebecca Dorr -- on it in October 2006, 20 years later:
Harsh. In a sport where an outstanding batter still misses the ball 60% of the time. (And personally, Bill, I don’t care if you autograph photos of the error for money. It happened to you, so why not?)
Buckner came back, played again. He didn’t allow that failure to be the defining moment of his life. Unlike many fans in Boston, who can’t “forgive” him because he didn’t.
We all make mistakes, have moments in our lives that we wish we could do over, when we have taken a wrong turn or let something get by us. Our challenge is to move forward from those moments and not allow them to define us.
Or to let being the best define us. Retrospectives at the end of each year highlight the “best of” that year. Those lists can be useful, if we remember that what defines the best is most often informed opinion, not fact, which is why arts reviewers for the same newspapers can come up with different lists for the best movies or the best books of the year.
Turn the calendar to the new year, and what was best is in the past. Predictions for the future abound, as we seek to define what lies ahead. We want to believe it can be known.
What we find often surprises us in the shock of discovery, as Susan Boyle did last year on “Britain’s Got Talent.” In the final contest, she came in second-best. But in the end, she met her own challenge to be a professional singer.
Millions watched her on the show and on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY (I love the moment when she starts to walk off-stage. She’s done what she came to do -- “make that audience rock” -- and she’s finished. I also love her smile in the pause before the final verse.) Her debut album was released in November with record-breaking sales.
She didn’t allow us to define her by what she wasn’t -- thin, glamourous, stylish -- but by what she was -- genuine, talented and courageous.
What could be better than that?
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