quote... sound advice, from someone who cares ... unquote

Newsletter
october 2007

The year was 2002. It was Saturday in the late morning. Even though it was February in the Northeast, the forecast was calling for a sunny day, with highs in the lower 50’s. The day promised to bring weather that would be a nice little break from the winter temperatures we had been having. But the day would also bring extreme disappointment to my 13 year old son, Morgan, and frustration to me and his mother.

To understand the level of despondency our family felt that day, I have to go back about six months, to September of 2001, and explain what had been going on in my son’s life beginning around that time. Entering his eighth grade year, Morgan had gone out for the soccer team and had survived the final cuts. He had made the team. On one of the last days of pre-season practice, he fell and broke his wrist. It had to be manipulated back into place by the doctor and put in a cast for four weeks. Morgan continued to work out with the team, but wasn’t allowed to play in any games because the rule is that you cannot play with a cast on. The cast may injure someone during play.

Morgan never missed a practice while his wrist mended. He ran every sprint and he did every drill and participated in every scrimmage there was. When he got his cast off, he was anxious to play, but the coach only let him in the game for a very brief time. For whatever reason, he played only a few minutes during the game. At first, we thought it was because of the injury and we reasoned that the coach wanted to bring him along slowly. But for the final six games of the season, the same thing happened during every game. All his teammates, even the weakest players on the team, played at least half of the game. But, having been a soccer coach myself and vowing never to interfere in player-coach matters unless it was an extreme situation, I kept my mouth shut. While I didn’t agree with the treatment, I didn’t think it warranted my getting involved. But looking back even now, it still doesn’t make any sense.

The soccer season ended and it was a disappointing one, but Morgan was ready to move on to a new season. He tried out for the basketball team that November. But he was not a great player and was cut during tryouts. It was another disappointment. He wanted to participate in something that winter, so he decided he would try out for the school play production in December. He wasn’t into drama so much, but knew he could help out with set design or lighting. They were always looking for help with that. Well, believe it or not, there were not enough spots available for him to even help out with the play production either.

Morgan was always a driven youngster, always trying everything and pushing himself. I admired his motivation and determination. During December, Morgan decided he wanted to be challenged more academically and, on his own, he applied for admission to a nearby prep school. We didn’t have the funds to pay for such an education, but we figured if he would get accepted, we would work something out at that point. We didn’t want to discourage his dream. He was a very good student, but we knew it would be difficult to gain admission. And that brings us back to that February Saturday morning.
A letter arrived in the mail from the prep school he applied to. The envelope was thin and I didn’t have a good feeling about this, but I had hoped that somehow it would be good news. I kept thinking this kid has to get a break sometime. Maybe this would be it.

It wasn’t.

It was a letter of rejection. It was yet another door slammed in his face. As he opened the letter, I could see the level of disappointment and frustration come across his face. Even for an eternally optimistic and driven young man like him, it was more than even he could deal with. He threw the letter down, ran out of the house, and down the street. He needed space, distance and time to get over this last rejection. My wife and I just looked at each other with broken hearts, wishing that we could somehow make this better, but knowing that we could not. The old cliches like “hang in there,” “things will get better,” and “this will make you stronger” were starting to sound pretty hollow even to us. Our child was doing everything right and still failing to reach his goals and facing rejection in what seemed like every endeavor he tried.

But he didn’t quit.

And that spring, he went out for another sport. This time it was the track team. And he started to have some success in several events. It was clear that he could run, and run fast. He became one of the best 400 meter runners in junior high school. And he also did well in the high jump. Summer passed and another soccer season came around. As a ninth grader, he became one of the leading scorers on the freshman team. After soccer had ended that fall, he applied for a scholarship to another prep school. My wife and I worried about another rejection and disappointment, but things had been turning around for him now and if he wanted to give this idea another shot, that was his call. We warned him that getting this scholarship wouldn’t be easy, but that we admired his willingness to try.
It was 2003 and it was another Saturday in February, almost a year to the day when his rejection letter had arrived the previous year. On this day, another letter arrived in the mail and it was from the scholarship committee. I didn’t know if I could, as his Dad, bear seeing my son faced yet another rejection, but I prepared for the worst, just in case. Morgan opened the letter.

“We would like to congratulate you ……..”

He had been awarded a full, three-year scholarship to a top-notch prep school. The education he was about to receive had a financial value of over $100,000. In retrospect, I realize that the education he received in learning to never quit was a lesson to which no financial value could be assigned. The scholarship, and accompanying education that it fostered, will always be a major blessing in Morgan’s life, but the real lesson for him was the process he went through to get that scholarship. He had come full circle. The pain of the first rejection made the award of the scholarship only that much sweeter. And he had a great three years at his prep school, serving as President of his senior class, achieving recognition as the school’s most outstanding athlete, and ultimately gaining admission to an Ivy League university, which he now attends.

The message here is a simple one and it is something that we’ve all heard before: Don’t give up. You just never know what may happen if you keep plugging away. Most of us are limited by none other than ourselves and our own perception of our limitations. And we are limited by our fears. We fear rejection and the pain that goes with it. We fear failure and what others will think of us. Ultimately, though, it is not success or failure that we learn from or that defines us. The process we go through that gets us to the end result is what we learn from. That end result could be success or failure, but our reaction to this success or failure is what defines us. The only true failure is in not trying. The only true success is in never quitting.