Winning and losing isn’t always black and white. Sometimes you can lose and still come out a winner. At other times you can
win, and realize later that you actually lost. I’ve been thinking about winning and losing after getting caught up, like most of our community, in the excitement of Glynn Academy’s bid to win the state championship in football. I found myself experiencing emotions like excitement, pride, and then disappointment even though I don’t know anyone on the team. In fact, I can still feel those emotions even now, days after I saw the score online, telling me that our team was going to have a much quieter ride home than I was wishing for them.
It is always wonderful when a community rallies the way this one has in recent weeks. Just from what I’ve seen in my few years here, it is big deal for Glynn County to share such a moment of pride. If I had to guess I would say that the effect of this football season won’t come to an end anytime soon, as it has sent ripples out into the future that we can’t fully measure yet. This is one of those occasions when a loss is still a win. A big win. I just hope all the young men on the team do or will come to see it this way.
We’ve all read the novels and seen the movies where the high school athlete can never quite get over losing “the big one”. I know enough to know it’s not just fiction. It can be really hard to lose a game like the one last week, which is why I really do hope that the GA Terrors are hearing what the community is still saying to them. Our disappointment in their loss isn’t a disappointment in them, but for them. We know how hard they worked and how disciplined they became as a team to get that far. We wanted them to win so we could celebrate with them, and in losing the game our hearts broke for them. But we are still very proud of their accomplishments, as they should be themselves.
A few years ago actor Charlie Sheen self-imploded in spectacular fashion. As his life fell apart his bizarre behavior got even
more bizarre. Some of you may remember with me that his motto at the time was, “Winning!” Sadly, what he tried to light-heartedly skate through was actually failure after failure. People enjoyed his demise in a sickening fashion, not unlike watching a car crash during a race or slow motion videos of things blowing up on YouTube. His motto may have been, “winning”, but in fact, most of us agreed that in the end he wasn’t a winner, but a loser. This is perhaps the prime example of a win being a loss. That’s not to say that had GA won their game last week their win would have been a loss – on the contrary.
What Charlie Sheen was on to, although in a drug-fueled bizarro way, was the helpful tactic of not dwelling on losses. Thomas Edison is famed for describing his process as he tried to invent the light bulb by saying, “I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Losses and failures can be quite helpful. That is how we learn. There are many things in life that we fail at or lose until we learn them or win. Kids who play video games know this, which is why they can play a game for hundreds of hours, losing thousands of times before finally winning or “beating” the game. For some reason it is easier losing in a video game, and much harder to accept in real life.
One unhelpful mindset around winning and losing is when we assume that God is with us when we win and against us when we lose. Religious history (even scripture) tells us that this is so in some places, although we do know it’s not true when we
stop to think about it. Nonetheless, athletes, in particular, seem to continue to convey an understanding of God’s favor, giving God credit for wins, and often staying silent on God and the loss. But even in religion we can see that the failure and the loser is not forsaken in God’s eyes. The Old Testament is a role call of people we might classify as losers in some way, and yet God called them to serve, leaving the faith a great, winning legacy. Even Jesus was, by all measures of his day, a loser. He stood up to the Romans and the religious authorities and lost. Or so it appeared at the time. Even his closest followers thought he lost the fight on that Friday. C.S. Lewis captures this beautifully in his narrative around the sacrifice of Aslan the Lion. But of course, we know differently. In losing, or more precisely in dying, Christ came to represent the ultimate triumph.
My hope and prayer is that to a person the members of the GA Terrors recognize that while they lost a particular game, as big as that game may have been, they are winners nonetheless. One game need not define a season, let alone a player. Most of them will have an opportunity to play another day, and even if they don’t, life will hand them opportunities to work hard to achieve more great things. …If they don’t miss them because they are caught up in losing that one game. All of us experience losses in this regard, and it is up to us to determine how we let them affect us.
Losses in life often make us wiser and stronger, and for many of us motivate us to work that much harder. If I can adapt Tennyson a bit, in this case I would say, ‘tis better to have played and lost than never to have played at all. We can swap out the original love for playing sports, and even for living life itself. It’s still the same. Each opportunity is a gift, if we will receive it as such, and give thanks for that gift and what it brings, even when we can’t see it at a particular moment in time. Three cheers for the Terrors! Great job all the way around. We’re proud of you.
Tom+
O God of Love, we yield thee thanks for whatsoever thou hast given us richly to enjoy, for health and vigor, for the love and care of home, for joys and friendship, and for every good gift of happiness and strength. We praise thee for all thy servants who by their example and encouragement have helped us on our way, and for every vision of thyself which thou hast ever given us in sacrament or prayer; and we humbly beseech thee that all these thy benefits we may use in thy service and to the glory of thy Holy Name; through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord. Amen.