Re: This is what it feels like to lose.

Mike Sullivan wrote:
"Charles Carroll" <charles_carroll@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:74854vF11eqeaU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
you can't at this moment cannot console or be consoled.

Ah, yes, to console oneself with the impossibility of consolation!
Know that one all too well.

I thought about this more tonight. It's an amazing human
phenomenon. My mother
died when I was a young age of 30 or so and was well able to share
the pain, offer consolation, and find a closeness with brothers,
sisters, even some complete strangers to me.

There are failures in rowing both as a rower and a coach that I
felt profoundly alone and helpless. At the time there was a sharp
pain of hatred, that dulled to an ache after a time. At various
times you connect, you talk, you love the men that endured it
with you. Yet we never really connect through that pain, we only
can understand it. We connected profoundly in the trust built
from the great effort we made, and the love of knowing that
your teammate did everything they could.

I'm grateful that in all of my losses over the years in rowing, I've
never coached anybody or rowed with anybody that blamed me for
that loss. This, indeed, is the rub. The failure is personal. It
is all of your own. I've never blamed anyone either. To do so
would be a gross moral failure, worse than the losing of the race.

Indeed, I think that's why failure is inconsolable. The most noble
among us cannot blame our mates for the loss, it is against our
nature, but at the same time we cannot absolve ourselves, for after all
it is failure.

There is a conclusive paragraph to be made here, but I am
not sure what it is yet.

Mike

Alistair's piece is very moving - and I was in tears while reading it
because it reminded me so of our son Leo. Mike's response above is a
fascinating, and equally moving insight. We have a photograph of Leo at
the award ceremony for the final of the local cricket league. He was about
11 or 12 years old. His team did brilliantly to get to the final, but were
narrowly beaten. He had just been awarded his runner up medal, but the look
on his face expresses everything that has been described in this thread. He
was inconsolable.

I have also struggled to understand this. Why is it so difficult for some
of us to forgive ourselves for coming second: for being unlucky on the day -
either due to circumstances, or simply because, on this day, someone else is
functioning better. Why are we not able to find comfort from the fact that
they are talented enough to be in the team in the first place - and from the
pure pleasure of performing the sport, and all the knock on advantages that
brings (skill, fitness, team bonding etc)? I don't think it is to do with
being competitve, or to do with self doubt. Although I recognise it in Leo,
I don't recognise it in myself -I have certainly experienced "failure", but
I have always been able to console myself.

I was very sporty in my youth, and my first experience of team games was
being in the school team for netball (for our American cousins that is a
harder version of basketball). I was about eight years old, as were many of
my team mates and we were often playing against older (and therefore
physically bigger) teams. We lost every match that season, including one by
a margin of approximately 54 to 6. Maybe that is when I developed a coping
strategy for failure! I remember our team being described as "plucky" and
"brave" - all positive attributes.

For our children, we never idolised the concept of always coming first - or
that winning is everything. We endeavoured to nurture the original Olympic
ideal that the reward is in taking part and knowing you have done your best
that the circumstances allow - Leo accepted all that, but it absolutely was
not enough - in sport he had to win. Yet, in other aspects of his life he
had a superbly pragmatic, cheerful and optimistic aspect, which gave him "an
amazing capacity for joy" - the words of one of his friends.

I don't think there can be any logical explanation for this contradiction.
Emotions are, by their very nature, beyond logic - at least modern day
logic.

Thanks guys for sharing these emotions. You may not always have won - but
you are clearly multi-talented and insightful human beings.

Jane


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