The Agony of Defeat

I like football. A lot. I like playing and watching it, whether at a football stadium, or in a sports bar or at home with friends. It is one way of seeing someone's true colors. It teaches team-work and dependence on other people. Perhaps the greatest lesson football teaches is the lesson on 'How to Handle Defeat'. In the recent past, the teams I support all over the world have been on the wrong end of damaging losses. My Kenyan team Gor Mahia were walloped 3-0 and my fellow fans turned to hooligans and ran riot on the victorious Posta Rangers. My English team Manchester United lost to bitter rivals Chelsea before losing to other bitter rivals Liverpool. My German team Werder Bremen is slowly trying to encourage me with a win when possible, it has otherwise been a terrible season for the team from the north of Germany. 

Some of my friends have decided to make fun of me because my teams have been losing. The fresh loss to Liverpool has given them opportunity to laugh at me and have a great time at my expense. In fairness, I have also laughed at people when their teams lost, and I say this to my shame. I have refused to receive phone calls from people I know to be football fans, but I also know that the pain will subside with time.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing is the realization of how painful it is to lose. I don't think it has much to do with my favorite teams not performing well. I think it has more to do with the human desire for success in everything we endeavor to do. We are generally not good at handling failure, and we develop different ways of responding to moments of defeat in our lives. Some people grow bitter and hate everything about the area in which they failed. Others accept it as their lot (Arsenal) and are genuinely surprised when they actually succeed at something. Others cannot accept the reality of failure (Gor Mahia) and take out their frustrations on other people.

Learning to handle failure at an early age will help any person to be a more proactive individual. You will learn how to turn stumbling blocks into stepping stones to success instead of using them to build an inescalable wall. It is important to deny failure a chance to become a normal situation in our lives. How do you handle failure? How better could you handle failure?