Nothing Fails Like Success

It should have been a happy event. Eight-year-old Elijah Burrell was playing his game in his first season of pee-wee football. The boy makes an interception in the fourth quarter, and does what he has been taught to do. He runs for the goal line. A few seconds later, he’s made his first touchdown and is on cloud nine, or wherever it is that kids go these days when they are happily excited. There are pats on the back, and congratulations, and cell phones snapping pictures, and for one little boy the world is all that it should be, right up until the point that the “equality police” show up. 

The league governing the boy’s team has a so-called “mercy” rule. This rule forbids one team from outscoring the other by 33 or more points. At the time of the interception, the Knights were ahead of the other team 32-0, and in his excitement young Elijah forgot that he was supposed to trip or fall or run out of bounds or suffer an embolism. Anything, except make that touchdown.

Apparently the “mercy” rule has little mercy for accidental violations. For the heinous crime of outrunning the other players, the winning team was fined $500 and the coach was suspended for a week. The moral of the story: Pee-wee is far too young to allow children to feel bad about themselves for bad performance, but you are never too young to be shamed for success. 

It’s a fitting time of year for this particular story. I’m quite a fan of horror stories, and I would be hard put to imagine one worse than a world where no was allowed to show talent, achievement, excellence. While some may think that a bit of an overstatement, I do not. Really. 

The lessons that we learn at an early age tend to stay with us, and can find applications in ways unforeseen. For example, while there are those who would never miss a Walter Payton, Hank Aaron, or even a Kathy Rigby, there would be other casualties. Imagine a world with no Rembrandts or Vermeers, no Edisons or Tesslas. 

Imagine millions dying each year of Polio cancer because Salk and Curie had learned at a young age to avoid standing out, that attempting to stand apart was a way not to reward, but to punishment, shame, exclusion. Imagine an America still bound by slavery because Lincoln dared not stand up or stand apart, or America still a colony because, after all, no one had ever succeeded in rebelling against England before?

I have seen glimpses of such worlds before. Ayn Rand conjured up such a place in her novella Anthem. Madeleine L'Engle captured a terrifying example in her book A Wrinkle in Time. Dull, joyless places where spirit and will are traded for a mindless uniformity. Places frightening in fiction, more so as they gain substance in our schools and playgrounds.

In our homes.

These rules, this “mercy” is nothing more than tyranny dressed in sanctimony. It can teach neither compassion in the winners, nor sportsmanship in the losers. There is no mercy, no compassion to be found in any part of this. How can there be? How can a child learn compassion for those who lose when they become the source of his punishment? Or compassion for the poor when the rewards he earned given to those who did nothing? Or all the praise for achievement is taken away and given to those who revile it? It defies reason…

There are some truths that we once knew as a people. Some have forgotten, and many who remember are forbidden to speak. So we sink deeper into anger, distrust, hatred, and envy, when there is no need. This is the truth: Mercy, love, compassion, and charity are not possessions. They are created in the hearts of giving men and women. As such, they cannot be commanded, demanded, or taken. They can only be given. And self-worth is not created in the recognition, but in the accomplishment. 

When we learn again to accept those truths, we will soon find the rules disappearing. Only the mercy will remain. How I long to see that day.