To Alice, with Love
What is it that makes us create such asses of ourselves when what we really want is to be champions? What within us causes that wrong turn, leading us to become idiots instead of the heroes we strive to be? Well, in my case, pride.
Once again, I find myself recovering from a stumble. No, not a stumble, an outright face-first fall. I let my pride get in the way of my responsibility to my best friend. There’s no excuse for it, plainly. You’d have thought by now, I’d have learned that needing to be right is no substitute for actually being right. Hurting someone I am supposed to protect is my prize for standing by my failed reasoning.
The truth is that she is the real hero and I’ve known that since we first met. She has endured so much from me and I honestly don’t know how or why she does. I thank God for her, but still I fail to take every opportunity to treat her like the wonderful, powerful treasure she is.
I ask her to forgive me for being an ass and an idiot and a fool. I can’t promise I won’t ever be these things again, but I can promise to learn to kick myself when I am.
To my best friend Robert,
Thank your for your post. I “endure” because I truly believe you are worth it!
Just to be fair, I’m sure you’ve also “endured” many of my craps. 
Fortunately, we were both “smart enough” to work through these “enduring” moments together and discover enlightening life lessons that end up enriching both of us separately and as a team. What I value so much about our relationship is that while we might not be the greatest person separately, some how we manage to bring out the better parts of each other. What can one ask for more than that?
With that said, we are all behaving like an idiot some times and we still fall on our face from time to time. I am starting to learn to accept that it’s only human that we make mistakes; mistakes are necessary part of life for us to learn and grow. There is no big point for beating our head over our mistakes for a long period of time (sure, as a human, I find it difficult not to be upset over my mistakes at least for a little). However, as my favorite coach John Wooden have said “You can make mistakes, but you aren’t a failure until you start blaming others for those mistakes. When you blame others you are trying to excuse yourself. When you make excuses you can’t properly evaluate yourself. Without proper self-evaluation, failure is inevitable” Yack, what a wake up call! If we would only listen, learn and embody what he said…
I reflect on my mistakes and failures (yes, failures per Coach Wooden’s definition), I got I still have so much work to do on myself in this realm. I’m truly touched that you called me a hero. I’m not sure I can call myself a hero (I don’t seek it). But one thing I know for sure, I am inspire to strive to be the best teammate I possible can be. Also, I want to build a team as strong as Coach Wooden’s team starting with us. As I struggle to understand what distinguish a winner from a loser, the best distinction I can come up with is that
Winner consistently develops, maintains and adopts growing number of winning habits over time while working toward eliminating their losing habits one-by-one everyday.
Loser consistently hanging on to and create reasons to justify for their losing habits while blaming others for each of their failures every time.
I got that we get to choose to be a winner or a loser everyday. The winner developed much higher % of winning habits than the losing habits; the loser have much higher % of losing habits than winning habits. Winning in life have NOTHING to do with how much money one have; there are plenty of very rich people that are losers and their life suffers (Charle Sheen, Tiger Wood,….). Instead, winning is about the peace of mind that resulted from the inner self knowing that we gave it our best whatever we do and to whoever we are with.
While like you, I also cannot promise you that I will never be an ass, an idiot and a fool, I can promise you that I am playing hard to be a winner. I know you are too!
Comment by alice — May 12, 2010 @ 2:44 pm