Gain and Loss

Trey Smith

The team I rooted for in the Super Bowl lost. I'm a little bummed out, but it's not THAT big a deal. Every time there is a contest of this sort, someone will win and someone will lose. That's a given from the get-go.

Often, when a team or individual loses a game, match or whatever, there is a lot of grousing about "pivotal" plays. If the ball had only been thrown one inch higher or the player had reacted only 0.3 seconds quicker, the outcome might have been altogether different.

While these considerations certainly are true, once a moment has come and gone, there's not a damn thing any of us can do about it. If you did your best during that moment -- heck, even if you were at your worst -- it's over and done with. The best we can do is to move on to the next moment.

As I've written before, in the overall scheme of things, sports isn't that important, but the lessons learned THROUGH sports are. What happens on the field of play is a mirror of what happens off it. The simple truth is that, as we travel our various paths throughout life, we will have lots of gains and losses.

While most people embrace the gains, we learn the greatest lessons from the losses. In my opinion, sages aren't born sagacious; they become that way from learning from each of there many missteps. If a person lived a life that was nothing but gravy all the way, I doubt seriously that I would consider that person wise.

In other words, it is when we fall down in the muck that we learn the most about ourselves. If we stay down and wallow in the muck, that says one thing and it is not very complimentary. If, on the other hand, each time we fall down, we pick ourselves back up and learn why we fell down in the first place, that becomes the seed of wisdom.