Musing about Learning to Fail (or not)

Photo: dievca -Hockey Trophies set up for an end-of-year banquet. NYC 02/2020

Did you get the sh*t kicked out of you growing up?
Not literally, figuratively?
Did you fail?
Are you a better person for it or are you bitter?

Or are you from an ‘Everyone Gets a Trophy’ generation?

It started when dievca was thinking about Generation Z, Millenials, the Greatest Generation, and World War II. Her feeling is that we couldn’t drop everything and make a united effort to save the country. But the current World and warfare are different and require different skills – so maybe it would work out.

dievca moved on to pondering failing and recovery.

Midori Ito offers an excellent example of something going to sh*t and picking yourself up to keep going. Click the GIF and a link will take you to the better quality video.

dievca rewatched the movie Miracle to celebrate the  40th Anniversary of the 1980 USA Olympic Hockey Team winning Gold.

This flowed into thinking about the 1980’s Olympics (dievca went to watch) and she saw athletes, including hockey players, training hard.  What about the people who didn’t make it through to the Olympics. What about the last two players who got cut from the 1980 USA Olympic Hockey team? Herb Brooks got cut from the 1960’s Olympics, he came back as a coach with a mission.

How did the two guys who got cut handle it?

One was devastated (UNH) and one was pissed (Harvard) – both turned out well.

The player who was devasted talked about how he got through it, with his Dad telling him about his experiences in WWII – how his daughter insisted that he watch the movie ‘Miracle’ movie with her in the theater and brought her whole University of Maryland Women’s Lacrosse team with her (35 girls) – which took the edge off the pain.