What Would You Do? (01-29-07)

Several months ago, I was watching my daughter play rec-league volleyball in Russell. Painted on their gym wall, in large, impossible-to-ignore lettering, were the words:

“What would you do if you knew you could not fail?”

I think I know the intended meaning: that you should approach every situation in life as if you could not fail – that with a “failure-is-not-an-option” attitude, you can do anything.

Yet, for some reason, the adage did not sit well with me. For months now, I have been reflecting about the meaning of those words, turning them over in my mind, trying to sort out why they made me so uneasy.

At League Wrestling on Saturday, it finally came to me. As I watched the fruitless struggles of several inexperienced wrestlers (Hill City has several freshmen on their squad), I was lost in complete admiration of their spirit, and complete appreciation for their resolve in the face of overwhelming odds.

While the wall in the Russell gym challenges us to live our lives as if we would never fail, failure is a cold reality for most of us most of the time. When Thomas Edison was asked about the length of time it took him to invent the light bulb, he replied, “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”

In other words, Edison, and many of our young wrestlers, have found a way to carry on even though they were not immediately successful. In fact, I would guess that Edison knew he would fail a lot, but had the “stick-to-it-iveness” to try again. And again. And again.

All young athletes are faced with a certain amount of failure, but in wrestling the struggle and the failure seems much more pronounced. Rarely do we see freshmen basketball players battling against senior squads, and while football can also produce crushing defeats, there must be a certain comfort in the fact that you win as a team and lose as a team.

But in wrestling, there is no protection and no hiding. One of my favorite sayings that I’ve come across at the wrestling tournaments I’ve attended is that senior muscle is a whole lot different that freshmen muscle. Freshmen sometimes have to wrestle seniors, and the ensuing massacre is an individual and personal ordeal.

I’m sure there must be lots of reasons why younger wrestlers gut it out in the face of almost certain failure. Perhaps winning doesn’t seem to matter as much to these brave athletes as simply competing. The competition, the experience, the camaraderie, the sense of accomplishment that comes with surviving a great difficulty, perhaps that is what keeps kids wrestling past that sometimes awful first year.

But I think that the freshmen wrestlers have figured out the flaw in those words I read in the Russell High School gym. To them, the question isn’t “What would you do if you knew you could not fail?” but rather, “What would you do if you know that you are going to fail?”

These young wrestlers’ answer is simply to get up, dust yourself off, and try again. And again. And again. To the inexperienced athletes who pay their dues in pain and defeat, failure may be an option…but quitting is not.

What would you do if you knew you were going to fail? After witnessing the resolve of our wrestlers, I now know the answer. Keep fighting, keep working, and never say die. Failure isn’t failure if it eventually leads to success.