Playing all 60

Our language is rife with platitudes and bumper stickers of positive affirmation that all center around the idea of not giving up. "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog," and "It's not over til it's over," for example. We love nothing more than to cheer on the underdog, the team or the person who keeps fighting til there's no fight left-- they "play all 60 minutes." Overtime games, while nailbiters, are the thing of next-day analysis the world over. 

That all said, damn. My Wildcard Weekend predictions were blasted last night after I went to bed, fairly secure in my thinking that the Chargers had the game well in hand. Well, they didn't. The Jaguars managed a phenomenal second half, and won by one point. Go figure. This season, the Bruins have really shown over and over again what kind of third period magic they have in their toolkit. There are so many examples of on-field heroics, but you know where I'm going with this.

So, sports aside, why do so many people just give up when things get tough? It can't just be gridiron heroes that do the hard stuff, right? I'm not talking about unrealistic expectations, but to grind along until the job is done is the definition of work ethic, I think, and I just do not see that level of commitment as much as I used to. (Now I sound like a grumpy old lady.) But truly, there seems to be a pervasive attitude of "good enough is good enough," and that has trickled all the way down to the little ones. Maybe it's the existence of participation trophies, or "it's okay, you tried" being the panacea to all poor performance. Yes, sometimes it is okay you tried; but the next step is to try again, and to try harder. Pundits wonder over and over again why school test scores are down (and I have lots of ideas about that), but I think we need to consider the attitude going into the testing-- if "I don't get it, skip it" is the pattern we've instilled in kids, then yeah, tests are going to look pretty darn awful. 

But enough about education. As a society, we give up on a lot. A seam lets go? Toss the shirt. Burned the bottom of a pan? Chuck it out. And so forth-- yes, many of us still work at fixing things, but the overwhelming majority of people just throw things away: objects, goals, other people. 

I believe in trying to fix things. It is better for the environment, and it is better for my soul. At the end of the day (or my life), I would rather have tried, to have "played all 60 minutes." 

Take good care,

C