In a speech in Paris in 1910, Teddy Roosevelt said:
“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
Stupendous. I was reminded of this quotation while watching an excellent performance by Anthony Hopkins in “The World’s Fastest Indian.” The film was marred only by promiscuity that no one needed. Just as we are now afflicted by “gray divorce,” so must our films now include gratuitous gray promiscuity. Such a shame!
But, that is not what the quote is about. It is about having the courage to go into the arena.
“Monday morning quarterbacking” describes well the posture of people who wait until the crisis has passed to explain how things should have been done. Joe Schmoe on the neighborhood Facebook page (what a virtual water cooler that is!) had a fine lecture for everyone about the lack of preparedness by the trash pickup crews ahead of a recent hurricane.
“Wow, Joe, that is so insightful. When will you launch your fully operational fleet of very much hurricane prepared trash trucks?” Granted, Facebook is especially susceptible to idiocy of the highest order, but there is a lot of idle chatter in our current age about how “we” could do it better.
Years ago I was taken aback by the simple statement: “Doers make mistakes.” Attempting anything is fraught with opportunities for failures, big and small. Someone who attempts a feat, from mounting a mailbox to running a business, will not proceed optimally, such is the nature of our lot in this life.
An important addendum to this is the realization that those not in the arena gain nothing because they risk nothing. They are not chagrined by their shortcomings or irritated by their own inadequacy. But they also gain nothing. You receive no credit in life for what might have been.
This thinking undoubtedly underlies some of the childfree movement. You can remain a perfect mother if only you never have children. One childless woman will likely remain childless because, she told the Wall Street Journal, “She doesn’t want to waltz into parenthood like her mother and father’s generation did: ‘You had more kids than you could afford. You smoked cigarettes when you were pregnant. Not a lot of thought went into it.’”
Smoking while gestating is less than ideal. If her parents had been more focused on being totally prepared, however, the speaker would not exist. How sad! Is it not better to exist?
How easily we can critique our parents for their shortcomings when we have not even attempted what they accomplished.
