perfection
a lofty and high goal
striving
at the cost of your soul

when is…
good enough, good enough

accomplishment
just to do your best
satisfaction
in meeting the test

when is…
good enough, good enough

participating
it is not the thing
winning
is the only thing

when is…
good enough, good enough

awards
just for being you
losing
is minimized and we do

when is…
good enough, good enough

battling
against the perceptions
fighting
to be better than yesterday

then…
good enough is good enough

~Mark Schutter ©2015

We teach our kids to apply themselves and they can do whatever they want.  Just for showing up they are rewarded and sometimes with very little effort on their parts.  We coddle and push, telling them that winning is not everything it is the only thing.  Then when they lose or fail we tell them it is okay that participating is the main thing.  As parents, can we have it both ways?  Are our expectations our of whack?

My daughter is already becoming an accomplished horse rider, winning Reserve Grand Champion for High Points in her age group in her first year of competing.  She rides a full Spanish Arabian horse named TaajRico and thanks to the generosity of her trainer she is half owner of. He is called Rico for short, that is him in the picture above, and yes, that is me on the quarter-horse behind her. 🙂 She competes in Walk/Trot Hunter Seat and Saddle Seat Equitation and Pleasure classes. I am so proud of her, but I do not want her to lose her joy and love of horses because she has to always be aware of what she is doing. 

• “Watch your diagonal.”
• “Keep your foot flat.”
• “Lower your hands.”
• “Sit back, you are to far forward.”
• “Keep his head down.” …and on and on.

She has voiced even now that sometimes she just wants to be around her horse and ride for fun and not worry about all these things that might make her a champion.  I want her to be happy and yet, I watch my daughter succeed at so many things and my heart swells with pride wanting to scream to everyone within earshot, “Look at her!”  Is this a veiled reflection of my own insecurities and finding some redemption vicariously through her accomplishments?  And she is only 10 years old, what does that say about me?

She is learning so much beyond just winning and losing.  She is responsible to take care of this living breathing animal.  Yet, when she does fall short I will minimize the loss and make excuses, justifying that it was not her but something else that made her fail.  Does this give her a false sense of reality?  The idea that we should teach our kids to not be in competition with the kid down the street, on the field or in the classroom is almost ludicrous.  Our society pits us against each other in so may ways in the name of entertainment, in business, in just getting ahead of or at least keeping up with the family down on the corner and their 3500 square foot house.

And yet… competition and competing is good.  To better oneself and to come out stronger and wiser regardless of the real outcome.  We should strive to be better than we were yesterday, even if it is only a little, that should be our goal.  To paraphrase Matthew McConaughey, we need to have someone to chase and that someone should be ourselves ten years from now.  We will never catch them but that is okay, it pushes us to be better and see a future that is both exciting and challenging.  Sometime good enough is good enough. You can watch the short video of his 2014 Oscar acceptance speech below.