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Dear Reader,
I overheard a mother consoling her son the other day. It sounded like he felt personally responsible for losing the ball game, he'd let his team down when they needed him the most. The bases were loaded--strike three--he was out and the game was over.
"It doesn't matter that you didn't win," the mother told her son. But I could tell that he didn't believe a word of it. And I never used to either.
When I was a kid, I knew what the goal was. The goal was to win the softball game and hopefully not be the last one picked when we divided up into teams (I wasn't a very good player), to get an "A" on the English test, to go out on a date with the boy that everybody thought was cool, to get a First Place Ribbon on my flute solo, and to win my parents' love.
I knew the rules, someone always had to lose, but I didn't want it to be me.
When I didn't make the grade, when I didn't come in first, my parents never said that it mattered, but I knew it did. The winners got the prize, the winners got the pat on the back, and winners were smiling at the end of the day. I was not.
It hurts to lose. The worn-out lines of encouragement--they never really gave me anything to grab on to. Nothing anyone said made any sense of the winning and losing thing, until the other day, when I read the book, From the Power of an Actor by Ivan Chubbuck.
Sometimes I pick up a book that doesn't appear to have anything to do with me, but then when I start reading it, I find a gem. It was a mystical, magical moment. The line had been waiting there for who knows, how long, for me to discover it. I don't really understand it, but there on page two were the words that made it all right for this "kid" to sometimes lose:
"A winner doesn't have to actually win to be a winner--a winner tries to win, a loser accepts defeat."
Ah, now it finally all makes sense to me.
I've finished reading The Power of the Actor, and I'd be happy to pass it on to an interested reader.
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Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]
http://www.DearReader.com
P.S. Sample The Bachelor Preferred Pastry, by Shirley Jump. Enter the free book giveaway. I have 25 copies for readers. Go to: http://www.supportlibrary.com/nl/users/master2/mweb/path5-1.html
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