THERE ARE WINNERS AND THERE ARE LOSERS

All through our lives we have tests and trials. Some we win and some we lose. I don’t know about you but in my experience I have learned and grown much more from my losses than from my wins. Oh sure, I would rather always win, but that just isn’t going to happen.

Maturity begins to happen when we learn to lose as well as to win. Nobody likes a sore loser. Reasonable people use their failures and losses as education. They learn from them and move on.

Over the recent past, though, a new thinking has emerged. The idea that everybody has to win and at everything. We shouldn’t have actual grades for school work because it might lower the self-esteem of students who don’t make the good grades. The fact that some didn’t work as hard is apparently irrelevant.  Everybody has to make the team whether they can play well or not. All young ladies who try out to be cheerleaders must become cheerleaders otherwise they may be harmed for life. 

How would you like to be facing surgery being performed by a doctor who was accepted into medical school and passed on to become a surgeon because the school was afraid to harm his self-esteem?  

This movement has fostered the concept that nobody can lose. Everyone gets a participation trophy. Young little leaguers then go through life thinking they can actually play well when in fact they cannot.

The pain comes when reality strikes. And reality always strikes. Students who are ushered through school and passed on eventually face the real world. Your employer expects real results and doesn’t particularly care about your self-esteem. If you can’t perform, you are replaced by someone who can. That is the simple fact of life.

So Ron, what’s this column all about? Well I’m about to tell you.

It appears some individuals who espouse this thinking that everyone must win have gone on to become potential candidates for government offices. We just experienced an election where some of the losers, Democrats, lost their elections but were ill prepared to lose. Of course I believe that if you go into an election, you should be prepared to fight to the end, but when the end is staring you in the face, recognize it and go on with your life. Be gracious, be kind, be respectful, and live to fight another day. Hillary will go to her grave bemoaning the fact that she lost. Had this country wanted Hillary Clinton to be President, she would have been President. Georgia gubernatorial candidate, Stacey Abrams, refuses to accept the fact that she was rejected by the voters of Georgia. She has threatened lawsuits to redo the election. Go away Ms. Abrams. Your thirty minutes of fame are up. Now you are just getting tiring.

The Florida mess continues to show the incompetency and possible deceit and treachery of their Democrat machine. Rick Scott’s vote count plurality went from 55,000 on election night to just over 10,000 in a recount. Where did those votes go? Recounts should happen when election differences are in the hundreds of votes, not thousands. Just like the Bush/Gore battle, this election produced the correct winners and life goes on. Florida will continue to be the laughing stock of this country.

All this has caused me to come up with a new idea. How about we create a “participation trophy” for losing politicians. When the votes are counted, election losers can be awarded this trophy and their self-esteem won’t suffer unnecessarily. I can see it now. It would be molded out of the best plastic and painted with EPA approved, non-lead paint in a nice gold color. It wouldn’t need any names engraved on it. That way we could use the same trophy over and over again saving tens of dollars. It’s a win, win. (sarcasm intended)

Here is reality. There are winners and losers. Intelligent people learn from their losses and grow. Losers just cry and complain.

Ron Scarbro