NOTE: I woke up to find this post sitting on my desktop. In all the excitement of preparing for the first day of class I neglected to hit the publish button…
I believe the new American story starts with, “Nobody ever thought I was good at everything…” I came by that feeling after watching a series of commercials that focused on individuals from different walks of life who’d failed at everything they’d tried until aided by one lending startup or another or even just decided to focus on leisure (seriously, a beer dude said he sucked at working so he made a beer and sold it). The general idea behind this is that we are all successful on the inside and no matter how much we fail we still have within us the ability to succeed.
Thats the good version.
That is the version I desperately cling to. However, I fear that this message is going to be misconstrued as, “doesn’t matter if you screw up. You’ll get it right when you’re ready.” I can see how the two might get confused. Teaching at a Community College I run into a large volume of students who feel like its okay to screw things up for a while and not give a dang about what they are doing until the decide that it is time to turn it on and be heroes.
Not everyone has that switch. Often success is the result of long term planning and persistent hard work. I fear this specific message is lost to the masses who are tuned in to ‘think not’ TV.
Some Thoughts
- At one point there were five members of the Cromartie family in the NFL. There are still three. That’s some serious familial dedication to the sport.
- Yesterday’s post made no friends… Not surprising. It is a difficult truth. I stand by my statement that a sport must stand on its own. Cheer does not exist in the absence of other sports. Who would you cheer for?