Boys:
I hazard to say that by now you have noticed that life does not always go as planned. You had clear ambitions when this all started months ago. You fashioned them like an artist does a painting: in parts, by degree, adding and subtracting important details along the way. To call them whims or fancies – dusky and hurried – would be a perversion. They were vivid and exact and sedulously wrought, and when you shut your eyes to summon them, they looked as real to you as the words on this page.
But these ambitions – some, most, perhaps all – went unfulfilled. You missed when you intended to hit. You dropped the ball when you intended to catch it. You were out instead of safe. In your dreams you were the victor. Awake, you met defeat.
It is unfortunate – and to you no doubt sad. It also is life.
In life, wanting something doesn’t mean you get it. In life, it takes more than great intentions to achieve great deeds. It takes tremendous determination and effort and faith – and even then that sometimes isn’t enough.
My generation, I fear, has done a poor job of communicating that point. I worry we have given your generation the impression that success is a right, that gain is an entitlement, that struggle is somehow inappropriate and unfitting.
In our defense, we meant well. Each generation wants the next generation to have it easier than they had it. Such is the human condition. But a desire to want life to be easier for someone is a far cry from the suggestion that life should be easy. My generation, I fear, has these notions confused.
Like you, I have failed this season. I have made countless mistakes – some minor, others grievous. I told you I would. You should accept these mistakes. But that does not mean you should excuse them. We meet the expectations people set for us and we set for ourselves. To doom me is to expect nothing of me.
A long time ago the Vermillion Tanagers were playing a baseball game in Norfolk , Neb. Norfolk
At one point a fly ball was hit to me in left field. I charged it, but the ball landed softly on the grass several feet in front of me. When at last the inning ended a batter later, our shortstop was waiting for me at the top of the dugout steps. Even though he and I were best of friends and shared a locker together at school, he lit into me. He told me I should have caught the fly ball, that it was a play I had to make. I told him I did everything I could. No, he said, I didn’t. I just thought I did.
A couple of innings later a second fly ball was hit to me. It was exactly like the first. Not an inch of difference. I caught it easily.
Too often we only mine the surface of our talents. Captive to our faults, we know not how great we are nor how great we can be. “Our doubts are traitors,” wrote Shakespeare, “and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.”
Those who suggest failure is nothing to fear have never struck out in the bottom of the ninth inning with the bases loaded. Failure cuts. Its taste is bitter. But just because we are imperfect is not to say we are incapable of perfection – at least moments of it – or that we should not demand perfection of each other.
Far worse than failure is the failure to act.
If I could choose one thought that you might take from our time together, that you might remember as you pick up that dropped ball or return to the bench, crestfallen, bat in hand, that, boys, would be it.