Many years ago, the famed sports writer Grantland Rice wrote, “When one great scorer comes to write against your name, he marks not that you won or lost but how you played the game.” I always loved that quote because I hate the snobbery that our society seems to enjoy when it comes to winning and losing. No matter what it is we are talking about in life.
As a young man playing baseball, I once dropped a fly ball allowing the winning run to score from the opposite team. Both teams left the field but I remained out on the outfield grass too ashamed to leave. A while later our coach walked out to me. He wasn’t there to console me. He told me get up and go congratulate the other teams’ players and then go tell your teammates you are sorry, not for dropping the ball but for your pathetic response to it. To this day I remember his words. I have taken that advice many times in my life and it’s always been beneficial. But it’s advice that doesn’t bode well for our society anymore. Oh, maybe in baseball but not in the mainstream of life and its politics. It’s long been a win at all costs and it’s tainted our relationships with each other politically to the point, it’s tearing our democracy apart.
When our government fails from this kind of winner takes all philosophy, and it will, we will all lose and the winners will be no better off than the losers. We will all be losers. It is in effect political suicide. The world no longer needs just the winners, it needs us all to get along in life.
It’s a new year, let’s start it off and finish it right.
Mike Holst
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