Throughout the course of this weekend, I was in Scranton, Pennsylvania because there was a debate tournament that took place in this small town. It was a little surprising to be honest, I expected the place to be more exciting, as it held the setting for the show: The Office, but it was horribly boring. Something else surprised me however, a young team from Georgia achieved an unexpected goal. That goal, was of getting to the semi finals of this national tournament.
They were surprisingly fantastic at this particular tournament, and being just a sophomore and junior were the farthest thing from expected to reach the final 4 of this pool of 70 teams, many being the premier seniors in America. Better yet, they beat two of the top 10 teams in the nation. One from the Boston area and another from Washington D.C. This was absolutely phenomenal and being close friends with this team, I was ecstatic and incredibly joyful for them. However, the two older teams they defeated in elimination rounds were not. Then I came to a conclusion, deep in thought, about how this upset could have occurred. That conclusion was that the best will not always end up on top. Given that this young team was absolutely excellent, they were simply disadvantaged from the more experience these other teams had on them.
This rubs me the wrong way, because it shows that however hard you work, or whatever you do to become the best will never be enough to win or to get that promotion. There are just too many external factors to guarantee success. It showed me that everything is ultimately put to some risk or chance in decisively winning.
Well, to come to terms with this, I eventually came to yield some fruit from this truth. I realized that all you can do is perform to the best of your abilities and that should be enough, I also recognized that this could always come to my advantage and to never give up. Being younger than most debaters, I know that anybody could beat anybody and that you should never tell yourself that you've already lost because anything can happen.
Maybe this truth isn't so inconvenient at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment