How Do You Keep On Playing When You Know the Game Is Lost?

This has been a week for great victories and great defeats. I'd like to muse on the defeat side of the issue for a few minutes. Like millions of Americans I watched both John McCain's gracious concession speech and Barack Obama's eloquent victory speech. The speeches of both men on this historic night brought me to tears.

Then yesterday I received an email from a student who was suffering from more than tears over McCain's defeat. She had been unable to get out of bed since the election. "It's so unfair. How could they let such a decent man lose?" she anguished. I'd actually heard some similar remarks earlier in the day and it got me to wondering: do young people think that being a decent person entitles you to win? My concern is that, in an era of entitlement, young people are not learning that - despite good effort and decent behavior - you may not win the prize.

That's why I think sports are part of a good education. Three days before the election I had witnessed the defeat of my son's college football team against their arch-rival. It was an important game. If my son's team won, they would be in contention to win the league title and go on to post-season opportunities. If they lost, they would be mathematically eliminated from winning the title and faced with several "meaningless" games to finish out the season. By the middle of the fourth quarter, it was obvious that the arch-rivals would win, and a pall settled over our visitor's side of the field.

After the game, during those precious few minutes we parents get with the players before they load up onto their luxury coaches for the long ride back to their campus, the young men were subdued but not destroyed. I heard one of the say with his voice choking, "Yeah, we'll feel bad - really bad - for a couple of days...and then we'll move on." I cried over that, too (hmmm, Mom cries over everything).

Student athletes have had the opportunity to lose many times over their careers and to learn to find a motivator to get up and play again. I was talking to my son yesterday and wondering how the team would get psyched up to play their "meaningless" game this week. He replied, "This is the seniors' last home game. We'll play hard to make it a good memory for them." Then he laughed. "There's always some reason to play hard, Mom."

In politics and football, there are winners and losers. Defeat is bitter, but it is oh so important in developing resilience. Without the experience of defeat, you don't learn that it's possible to "feel bad - really bad - for a few days, and then move on." Without the experience of defeat, you don't learn that you can readjust your goals and that there's always "some reason to play hard" - even if it isn't for the goal you thought you couldn't survive losing. I know that John McCain will continue to redefine his goals and play hard to reach them. He comes from a background that allowed him to learn from defeat. I'm happy that my son is learning from defeat as well.

What I worry about are the many young people that have grown up without the opportunity to learn from defeat, those that grew up in the "self-esteem era" of the "80's where no child was allowed to lose. The theme I see as a college faculty member (which was evidenced by my student's email quoted earlier) is that losing is a form of punishment and that if you follow the rules and try hard you deserve to win. Let me provide more evidence: after every midterm or final exam, a number of students set up an appointment to tell me how hard they studied; they believe that studying hard should earn them a higher grade despite their actual performance (and this is at Harvard, no less).

Our cultural institutions - from Congress to the school systems to the legal system to the multitude of media outlets - send a message that you're entitled to win, and that all experiences should be win-win or they're not fair. If something goes wrong in your life, you have legal recourse to sue over it; if you start to feel bad (don't let that happen!) you take Prozac or Xanax. How then can our young people learn to tolerate the ups and downs of existence? How can they learn that they can survive "feeling bad - really bad - for a few days" and that they can actually grow stronger - and ultimately happier - from experiencing defeat? How then can they learn to pick themselves up after they fall down if we encourage them to sue someone every time they fall? Life isn't always a win-win proposition. And learning to lose - as John McCain and my son's football team affirm - definitely does not make you a loser. In fact, learning to lose well and move on is - in politics, football and life - the ultimate form of winning.