Dealing with Disappointment
There’s no other way to say it. No other way to look at it. When the game ended, we just didn’t lose… We got killed.
I coach my son’s basketball team. Ten 8 year-olds on one team playing a group of eight-year-olds. I’m not sure if it’s basketball or just pure organized chaos. But I love to be with my son and with the other boys.
But there’s a problem. Well, more of a challenge. My son‘s team is comprised of ten really nice boys. And, to be candid, none of them are basketball stars. This past weekend, we lost for the second time this year. The final score was 38 to 8. The funny thing is, the scoreboard said 28 to 8. The YMCA has a rule that when one team goes up by 20 they don’t add any more points. I was appreciative of that rule.
The YMCA, very appropriately, preaches not to worry about the score. That’s tough with a bunch of eight-year-old boys. They check the score while they’re sitting on the bench when they’re on the court, and even when one of the boys ran to the bathroom in the middle of the game. How do you present a positive spin on a loss by 30 points? And quarters are just eight-minute running time. That’s a lot of points in a short amount of clock. That’s what I was challenged with right after the game. There was no reason to get upset. No reason to yell. It would’ve been wholly inappropriate. They got beat by a team of better boys.
It made me think. How many times in life are there disappointments? That’s kind of rhetorical. The real question isn’t how many disappointments there are but how one deals with it. The old adage of “making lemonade out of lemons.” Whether it’s a disappointing job review, some disappointment at home, some disappointment with a donor, some friend that let you down, something doesn’t go your way, or almost anything else, the question becomes how do you deal with it.
That’s what I talked about on the way home from the game with my son. I told him the other team was better. He looked at me kind of strangely considering he could see the scoreboard as well as I could. What we talked about what he was going to do about it. He said he probably needed to practice more. I agreed. He also said that he really likes basketball even though we lost. He wants to continue to play.
Robert Fulghum was correct. Everything you need in life you learned in kindergarten. How do you deal with something is more important than what happened to you. What are you going to do next time disappointment finds you? An 8-year-old and his basketball team are a great reminder of this for me.
