Winner, Winner…

Vince Lombardi’s “winning isn’t everything it’s the only thing” is referenced almost as often as Yoda’s “there is no try, only do.” Did the coach on the 1960s Green Bay Packers and the wrinkled, green Muppet sit next to one another in middle school? If not, how did they both come up with a philosophy that is as ubiquitous as it is damaging to children?

For insight I turn not to a galaxy long, long ago but to a body that, if memory serves, I inhabited 45 years in the past. As so frequently happens in marathons—happens to me anyway—I was chatting with my new best friend, someone with whom I was sharing and receiving emotional intimacies. With someone whom I had never spoken to before and would never meet again. Arnie was going through a rough divorce he told me as we sped past Mile 16. He didn’t feel as connected to his children as he would have liked he mentioned at Mile 17. He was up to two packs of cigarettes a day he said at Mile 18. Not only did Arnie have an unhealthy predilection for nicotine, I had noticed when we started schmoozing at Mile 15 that Arnie was two doughnuts south of 250 pounds.

I would tell you more about Arnie, what happened with his ex-wife if he rekindled his relationship with his children, if he was able to quit cigarettes, but at Mile 19 Arnie politely mentioned that he was going to pick up the pace and that, although I was welcome to join him if I liked, he had to run faster in order to finish the marathon because he had some commitments later that day.

Feeling strongly that my activities subsequent to (hopefully) finishing the event (upright) would involve alternating napping and moaning, and that I was already running as fast as I possibly could thank you very much, I declined to push the pace. Perusing the results from the comfort of my bathtub hours later, I learned that Arnie had indeed “beaten” me by over ten minutes.

In the half century since that first marathon I have been “beaten” by runners of all ages and descriptions. I have been beaten by nine-year-old children at 5K; people running 26.2 miles in sandals; a man juggling a basketball, a lacrosse ball, and a football; pregnant women in ultra-marathons; blind people; and good folks of all ages, descriptions, and differences at every distance from the 440 through 50 miles.

If winning were my only score card, I would have—had I a brain in my head—determined long ago that I wasn’t going to win any event at any distance under any circumstances.

One person wins. By three hundredths of a second in the New York Marathon last month. Or by two hours if you compare my marathon time with that of the person who gets their name in the paper. I have never won a race. Absent a Zombie apocalypse and concomitant seven billion incapacitated inhabitants, I am never going to win a race. And if the Zombies do take over, what assurances do I have that they will organize 5Ks what will being preoccupied with consuming human flesh all the time.

Mia Hamm said that “the person that said winning isn’t everything, never won anything.” Fair enough, Mia. And I certainly resemble that remark. I do feel strongly that winning isn’t everything and no, I have never won anything. Although I feel more connected to Jackie Robinson who pointed out that “you learn more from losing than winning. You learn how to keep going.”

What does my unrequited 50-year love affair with plodding various distances through disparate swamps have to do with your beloved children? My daughter is more likely to marry a Zombie than she is to run 50 kilometers through the Everglades or elsewhere. My son won’t run for a bus never mind train for a marathon.

Only this: are you inadvertently classifying your children as winners not on the track but in the classroom? Are you categorizing your kids as champions—she got an A on her calculus test?—and losers—he wasn’t graduated first in his class?

There is no try, only do. Nah. And what about the—to a first approximation zero percent—of the population who do win? Are they any happier, more content, self-actualized than you or I? And if you do finish first out of 20,000 of my closest friends in the marathon in Miami—I came in around 6000-somethingeth one year—then what? First in Miami at two hours twelve minutes means you’re still dog meat in Boston or Berlin where the winning time is five minutes faster. Winning is a treadmill from which there is no exit. And somebody has to clean up all those champagne bottles.

Focusing on effort rather than result means you can’t lose. Enjoying the preparation, delighting in the camaraderie, relishing the participation is a victory that cannot be diminished.

Love the kids you get and you’ll get the kids you love is more than just the title of my third book on parenting. It’s a recipe for a—here’s that word again—winning family.

I would corroborate the above suggestion with my temporal best friend, Arnie, but, as I mentioned, he left me at Mile 19 some 45 years ago and I haven’t seen or spoken to him since.