The Way We Handle Defeat Defines Us

Have you even noticed how cringingly aweful it is to see a person or team defeated? It happens in the sporting arena all the time, day in, day out. There's a winner and there's a loser. Just to be a supporter is hard enough because you put your emotional stake up there every time, risking disappointment for the exhilaration of victory.

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My favourite football team showed me something this year in the way it handled one defeat after another. Out of twenty-two games it was a 4-18 record and wins were few and far between; and they only happened at home. There too were the embarrassing defeats, where the team lost a significant percentage of games by more than 50 points, with the most painful defeat to the reigning Premier by 135 points. It was hard to take. "Resignation" was my attitude to it, in one word.

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But it's only now, when I reflect back, looking at the leadership of the club in its most dire state--only less than two years being the Premier club in the AFL--that I see the character of the club to endure the season and to take with real dignity the aweful losses dished out.

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We're defined by how we take our losses. This is a life truth. To be humiliated yet not cower down takes real character. This cannot be taught. It must be learned personally, experientially... it must become intrinsic to our being. This process has to be painstaking. There are no short cuts to character development.