At least once a
month, Kim or one of the girls pulls out the DVD of Remember The Titans
and we watch it together as a family. The
most recent viewing was two nights ago. Kim
made popcorn and we sat in our family room and watched it. We’ve watched the movie so many times, we can
recite the dialogue along with the characters.
At various parts in the movie, we laugh.
We get annoyed, if not downright angry.
We cheer. We tense up even though
we know the outcome. We tear up. And in the end, we smile.
There is a scene
when Coach Boone, played by Denzel Washington, tells his team that they are to
Pursue Perfection. No fumbles. No missed blocks. No missed tackles. Perfection.
Quite the
notion, Perfection.
I’ve coached
high school and college basketball. I’ve
watched my son and daughters play basketball, soccer and softball. Now it’s exclusively soccer, though both
Emily and Hannah play Powder Puff football.
When I coached,
I told my teams, my players, that basketball was a game of mistakes: the team
that makes the least amount of mistakes is the team that usually wins.
It doesn’t
matter what the sport is. A wrong
pitch. An ill-timed error. A missed free throw. An interception. Blown coverage. It doesn’t matter what the sport is.
We see it in
high school games. We see it in college
games. We witness it in the pros. It’s a game of mistakes. Any game, every game, is a game of mistakes.
But knowing that
shouldn’t prevent a team from The Pursuit Of Perfection. As Boone says in the
movie, if we aim at Perfection, we might achieve excellence.
And that is the
way of life, isn’t it?
We Pursue
Perfection. And if we do, perhaps we can
achieve excellence. And for those of us
who really, really struggle, if we aim at Perfection, perhaps we might hit pretty
good. Or on a bad day, we might hit
okay.
But there is a
risk in the Pursuit Of Perfection.
Sometimes in our
effort, we might trample on others to be Perfect. In our effort, we might ignore the beauty
that surrounds us, the love that embraces us, the help that is offered to
us.
In our Pursuit
Of Perfection, we run the risk of feeling down and defeated if we achieve less
than Perfection. We run the risk of
judging ourselves too harshly, not recognizing that we are, after all, human,
and prone to making mistakes. That
seldom, if ever, was there ever someone who was Perfect. In fact, I can only think of one individual
who was Perfect, and He lost his temper with the money changers in the
temple. In fact, the one individual who
was Perfect was eventually whipped and crucified.
So . . .
Perhaps we can
Pursue Perfection, but still enjoy the life we live. Perhaps we can Pursue Perfection, but still
see the beauty around us, feel the love that embraces us, and every now and
then, accept the help that is offered to us.
And perhaps, in
our Pursuit Of Perfection, we can help others along the way as they, too,
Pursue Perfection. And we can help each
other recognize that we are all, each of us, only too human, only imperfect
creatures, and in that realization, we can smile and nod and recognize that we,
each of us, are really pretty good in spite of our lack of Perfection. That it’s okay to be pretty good. Even okay to be, okay. Something To Think About . . .
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Thank you for your comment. I welcome your thought. Joe