Get the feedWinning
Thursday, Oct 08th 2009
John, you are exactly right. Win the game. It annoys me to no end how people believe that a win isn’t really worth celebrating unless it was won by saints. The fact of the matter is that playing a game well — and within the rules — requires an enormous amount of virtues, such as those that John notes below. I get a bit weary of the notion that in everything we must be advocating some “larger cause.” Why can’t I buy a truck because it’s a good truck? Or shop at a store because it’s convenient and cheap? Or root for a team because I grew up a few miles from their arena?
I sometimes feel like the “virtue” that we foster by all of this “bigger picture” stuff is . . . preening, irrelevant self-righteousness. To build a good truck, to create a retail establishment that meets the needs of its customers, to put together a team that destroys the competition, these are good things in themselves. Note, I did not say that “good people do those things,” because who knows if the guy that put the door on my new (and freakin’ awesome) Nissan Titan was a good man, a good dad, or a good husband? But I do know this: That door fits great and closes with a “thunk” that could crush a Prius.
David French
David French is a Harvard educated lawyer, writer, and soldier. His next book, about his year spent in Iraq, comes out on July 4, 2011. Connect with him on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/DavidAustinFrench and follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/davidafrench.
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