Last Saturday, Debbie and I drove up to East Lansing to watch the MSU Spartans play football with the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
We arrived a little early and tailgated with some friends (if you call eating sushi and sandwiches from Zucca's tailgating). It was fun.
From the gitgo it was all Spartans. Stanton looked sharp, Notre Dame a step slow. Debbie and left about the middle of the third quarter with MSU up 37-21. We walked out of the stadium in a driving rainstorm.
I thought for sure that MSU would go home the victor. Instead they ended up being the victim.
Driving home, I listened in dismay as they lost the game. They blew it.
Blew it big time.
Whether they will recover or not this year remains to be seen.
It disappoints me when others blow it, but it disappoints me even more when I blow it. And we all do.
Mistakes happen, we inevitably do the wrong thing, usually with the best of motives.
So here's the question (let me know what you think).
Why is it that we are so surprised when we see someone blow it and so devastated when it occurs in our own lives?
While I look forward to hearing your answers, perhaps one lesson that we all might learn is that at the end of the day we need to realize that no one is perfect, no one gets it right all of the time, everyone makes mistakes.
So ease off today. Ease off on others...and ease off on yourself.
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I think the measure of your surprise (and disappointment) is influenced by your outlook on life. If you are a positive outlook person (an optimist), then you expect things to go as planned, that everything will work out as expected, that the odds will play out. If you are a negative outlook person (a pessimist), then you never expect things to go as planned, nothing ever works out, and you're always losing at the odds.
I guess the key is to expect the best, try to calculate all of the variables, and plan for the worst. Michigan State expected that they would be able to continue to dominate Notre Dame and got conservative...they forgot to calculate the variables (turnovers equate points, the other QB is very good, momentum is heavy, etc.)...and they did not plan for ND to come roaring back. Conservative is NEVER GOOD in football...or most of the time in life.
Your sermon on Sunday was right on. We must continue to risk, knowing that not everything will go right, that fear will be there. We must continue to run the race, pushing for the end. Paul was very eloquent in his analogy to the race...we have to push, not sit back and coast. If we sit back and coast, then we very well may fail. Only by pushing our hardest do we know that we gave all to the task at hand.
Everyone fails...and hindsight is 20/20. I can tell you why MSU failed...because it is already in the past. Coasting is bad.
I cannot begin to number the times that I have failed in my life. I have learned not to beat myself up over most of them and to not berate those who fail me. Failure is a part of life. We must learn to risk failure, pick ourselves up when we fail and help others to do the same, and continue to press forward to the end of our race.
We already know the outcome but need to get the results out to as many as we can. GOD WINS!
Love God, love people. That's our mission in life. Risk much to make it so; the retirement plan is awesome!!
God bless
Jon
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