Skipping the Backslide of Sorry

Unfortunately, our vacation to the Outer Banks this year is off to a rather bumpy start with several days worth of unprecedented rain.  We have had seek out other forms of entertainment indoors instead of the customary boogie boarding we usually do.  I discovered my two youngest children, aged 7 and 8 into a cabinet at the rental  house with board games, in particular, Sorry.  I found myself immediately saying out loud to my oldest son, aged 22, that under no circumstances was he to even consider playing THAT game. 

He and my oldest daughter are two years apart, both adopted from Russia in 1996 and grew up side by side.  They ranged from being the greatest friends pulling some epic capers to mortal enemies at times, just like most siblings. Nonetheless, there was the Christmas that Santa made the mistake of getting them Sorry.  I sat down with them and taught them to play and before long they got the hang of it and were off and running.  Pretty soon, each time they played, I would hear my daughter gleefully yelling,"SORRRRRRYYYYY!!!!" as she slid his pieces backwards. This would go on for several turns until the crowning blow, "Sorry" was met with the sound of a game board being launched off the table, pieces hitting the wall, and furious stomping out of the room.  It was truly a site to behold, to the place that even at age 22, I don't think I have it in me to watch him play.  

Running through this in my head I began to think about how many times in the struggles of life we become bad losers.  We become so caught up in our own defeat, be it a bad diet day, a pound or two gained, losing a race or trying to come back from injury.  Our own proverbial game pieces seemingly being moved further from our goal. We seem to begin to resent the guy who appears to sail through with no issues, and just get to the place we want to chuck it all and take ourselves out of the game as we think there is no way to win.  

Maybe the better answer is actually to see what that guy is doing that allows him to win.  I would suspect that anyone reaching the same goals we hope for has a strategy.  Something we have not thought of, or has suffered setbacks we had no idea existed.  Maybe instead of avoiding the game we need to learn to be better losers and draw from the experience of the guy ahead of us instead of resenting where we are. As we start to propel forward, I also think we need to take the time to look behind us.  See who is behind us and how we can lift them up to join us on the journey.  We need to hand them their own game pieces and not yell sorry as we revel in our own win.

I am beginning to wonder if maybe taking my kids out of this particular game to keep the peace was perhaps a parenting fail.  I am starting to see that avoiding challenges and conflict just because we may not win right out of the gate, or we may be uncomfortable, breeds a brand of complacency that allows us to miss some of the greatest things life has to offer.  It may take some losses, some backward sliding, but in the end there will be a win.   It will just take a certain amount of gracious losing, learning from the strategies of those ahead of us and having the perseverance to keep our game pieces firmly on the board.  

Tomorrow, we are to have a bit of rain again.  Perhaps it is time to dust off the Sorry and show the kids how to stay in the game.  The best is yet to come.