My main frame of reference about what matters most, when all else becomes too much to endure, is through parenting. Even though I have a rich career's worth of dealing with external realities to consider, often in pivotal companies or groups at key moments in the history I've witnessed up close, in the end, I know, it's not what you do in your career that matters.
Thus it was in a heavy rain and the San Francisco version of bitter cold (everyone living outside of the west coast please stand down), that I watched my youngest child yesterday play in her team's first soccer game of the spring season.
This particular team has not had a glorious history, in conventional terms. In fact, if my records are correct, they enter this season with a historical record of three wins, 25 losses, and two ties.
However, these girls are now more experienced, they have grown, and a few new and very talented players have joined their ranks. All of a sudden, they look like a pretty tough U-13 soccer team, perhaps very tough.
Accordingly, in yesterday's rain, they beat a traditional rival 2-1. My own member of the team, a defender, played well.
But she also did not get to play as much of the game as she usually has in past seasons, for the simple reason that the team has more options now, and her place on the team may well be slipping from a starter to, perhaps, a substitute.
I'm not sure whether she realizes this yet, and even less sure whether it will matter to her once she does. But I have to admit, as I watched her play and then sit in yesterday's cold rain, that a big part of my already fractured heart broke on her behalf.
Yet I know that in all realms of life, with greater success comes greater competition. That's how it is in all aspects of life in a capitalist society. Only the very best rise to the top, at least in theory.
Winning, after all, is what it is all about. Right?
Maybe yes. Maybe no. I have written long enough and extensively enough about my theory of youth sports for my perspective to be clear. I agree that winning matters, and that the best players should rise to the top.
I also know that sports is mainly about character-building, and part of character is learning to accept your own limits in the context of what others around you may possess in pure physical skills.
And in that latter context, sports allows you to learn how to lose. Not only how to lose games, and keep going, but also how to lose position, prestige, your place in the scheme of things.
This last lesson may be the most important of all. When circumstances determine us to be stars,"successful," and the type of people others envy, the entire trajectory almost seems god-given, especially if you believe in the construct of god.
But when we turn out to be judged as less than stars, less than successful, and perhaps the object of other people's pity, none of this seems god-given. Although acceptance of your apparent fate is, of course, what most religions counsel.
I, for one, do not accept either polarity. While it is nice to be a star, and I have often been so in my career, it is not always so bad to be something less than a star, which I also have experience at being.
After all, as I said at the top, what you do out there in public, with all of the accompanying judgments -- both positive and negative -- pales with what you accomplish within the fabric of the social group that most matters, which is your family.
And in every family that is worth its name, we know that each member who tries, regardless of the outcome, is a superstar in her own right. We cheer ever louder as she does her best, and we do not count wins or losses or any other measurements to know how we feel about her.
In our eyes, in fact, she is perfect.
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