Did you do your best?
Let us consider a question most frequently heard with relation to sports, “Who won the match?” We, as human beings, have the normal tendency to appreciate winners and admire their hard work. Be it any sport, a team or a player would have maximum fan following if they have a majority of wins to showcase. While we must appreciate winners, any game or sport is much beyond the winning team or person. Reaching a professional level within any sport involves immense hard work, dedication, sweat and tears on the part of every athlete. We often see players failing to achieve a podium finish but, on the other hand, breaking their personal best records, national records etc in the same event. Ultimately, that’s what counts – each time, the aim should be to give the very best one can offer; the urge to do better than the past and go beyond limitations and expectations.
There is a famous incident from the early days of former US President Jimmy Carter which is of great relevance even today. For many years, Admiral Hyman Rickover was the head of the U.S. Nuclear Navy. Every officer aboard a nuclear submarine was personally interviewed and approved by Rickover. Among them was a young Jimmy Carter, who applied for service under Rickover.
This is how he narrates the account of his interview with Admiral Rickover: “I had applied for the nuclear submarine program, and Admiral Rickover was interviewing me for the job. It was the first time I met Admiral Rickover, and we sat in a large room by ourselves for more than two hours, and he let me choose any subjects I wished to discuss. Very carefully, I chose those about which I knew most at the time—current events, seamanship, music, literature, naval tactics, electronics, gunnery—and he began to ask me a series of questions of increasing difficulty. In each instance, he soon proved that I knew relatively little about the subject I had chosen. He always looked right into my eyes, and he never smiled. I was saturated with cold sweat. Finally, he asked a question and I thought I could redeem myself. He said, ‘How did you stand in your class at the Naval Academy?’ Since I had completed my sophomore year at Georgia Tech before entering Annapolis as a plebe, I had done very well, and I swelled my chest with pride and answered, “Sir, I stood fifty-ninth in a class of 820!” I sat back to wait for the congratulations which never came. Instead, the question: “Did you do your best?” I started to say, “Yes, sir,” but I remembered who this was and recalled several of the many times at the Academy when I could have learned more about our allies, our enemies, weapons, strategy, and so forth. I was just human. I finally gulped and said, “No, sir, I didn’t always do my best.” He looked at me for a long time, and then turned his chair around to end the interview. He asked one final question, which I have never been able to forget—or to answer. He said, “Why not?” I sat there for a while, shaken, and then slowly left the room.”
While we must encourage our future generations to be part of sports and games, which will help them stay physically and mentally fit, and inculcate a team spirit along with other important values, we must also instill within them the deep desire to give their ultimate best each time in every area of their lives. The Bible says that, as human beings, we are created by a perfect and most excellent God in his own image, so that we could seek a relationship with him and strive to be like him. Thus, this urge to transcend and go beyond ourselves every single day, which sport can so beautifully inspire within us, is precisely what we are created for.
Did you do your best?
