The Pursuit of Perfection and What Happens Next
I am a huge New England Patriots fan. I was born just west of Boston, Massachusetts and even though I no longer live in New England, the Patriots will always be my team in my heart. My mother and father imparted to me a love of the game of football, and a deep loyalty to the Patriots, in good years and bad.
This was supposed to be a good year. Somehow right now, it feels worse than the year they went 1-15.
I’ve been quietly sitting here licking my wounds for the past few days, mulling over the idea of perfection and setbacks and what it all means. I’d written as much of a post as I could muster about stumbling along the way vs losing it all at the end on the heels of the Patriots superbowl defeat, but then BeThisWay published her excellent post about life lessons and what we could learn from the superbowl this year, so I’m going to take a slightly different tack.
For those uninitiated in the ways of football, the Patriots went undefeated in the regular season, and with a win in the superbowl would have become only the second team in NFL history to have a perfect record. But then they lost to the underdog Giants, and now they are simply another 18-1 team, but without even a superbowl win. As my mother always says, almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, so almost perfect doesn’t mean all that much right now. For the Patriots. The Giants were far from perfect in the regular season, and that doesn’t matter any more either, because they won the superbowl, and are now the champions. I don’t think there is a Patriots fan out there that wouldn’t trade the perfect regular season of the Patriots with the superbowl win of the Giants. I know I would.
There are those who say that if the Patriots had lost a game or two along the way, they’d be the champions right now. I don’t know if that is true or not, but it appeals to my sense of logic. Being perfect is a lot of pressure in and of itself, and without the pressure of perfection, the Patriots might have managed to play better in the superbowl and walk away with the win. I know firsthand about the pressures of perfection, for I am a perfectionist through and through. When I went through my recent car repair saga, I let myself get really worked up about having to finance part of the repair bill. Honestly, it felt like I’d irrevocably failed. I know that isn’t true, and I know it is just one setback along the road to achieving debt freedom, but the use of credit really got under my skin and into my brain. I was really attached to being able to say I hadn’t used credit since 2003. We’d had many setbacks in the past four+ years of concentrating on debt reduction, but we’d always managed to avoid increasing our debt totals. Until now.
But unlike the Patriots, this isn’t the end of my journey. There is loads of debt reduction ahead of me, and I’ll recover from this setback and move forward past it before you know it. But does it matter that I’m in the middle and not at the end? What if this was the end? What if I was already debt free and then had to go back into debt because of some sort of huge financial setback?
Then I’d be the Patriots, and I’d start over. This isn’t the end for them either, it is just the start of the next try for perfection. Or at least, a superbowl win. It feels awful right now, but in a few short months, it all resets, and we try again. And that’s the life lesson I’m trying to internalize. Nothing’s forever, nothing is set in stone, and we all can only do the best we can and recover gracefully from our defeats and move forward. What happens next is the true mark of what this team is, and I hope they’re as good an example as I expect them to be. I could use a few lessons on recovering gracefully from defeat myself.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
You can also: Stumble It! Bookmark Submit to Reddit Submit to Tip'd
February 6th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
wow…i don’t follow football at all, but your portrayal of the defeat left me feeling like i had experienced defeat right along with the patriots.
we are still working on paying off our debt, so we have never had the experience of being off credit for a long time and having to use it again. i’m sure that can be extremely frustrating. i hope recovery is graceful-for you and the patriots. next season it’s the superbowl!
February 6th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
I grew up in Melrose long, long ago and still travel up to Rockport where I have friends and family! Small world.
As for perfection…there is none in life. We all do the best we can, given the circumstances we have.
Your writing is so inspirational. Have you ever thought of publishing a book with your wisdom?
February 6th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
I’m pleased as punch that you liked my post so much.
I think you’re recovering quite gracefully from your debt setback.
As my father says, winners always find a way to win. You’re still winning.
February 6th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
I grew up in Massachusetts and went to college right outside of Boston (living in CT now). I too was greatly disappointed with the Superbowl game. I still can’t seem to fathom the thought that the Patriots actually lost.
I have been reading your blog for a few months now and have thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. You are a winner in my eyes :o) Keep up the good work!!
February 6th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
I was born in Melrose Wakefield Hospital!
Okay I have no idea if that hospital is even still there, my family moved to western MA when I was in elementary school and I now live in the midwest.
But that is still exciting to me. lol
I don’t think I have the attention span for a book. But thanks for the compliments!!
February 6th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
I don’t know if I can read your blog anymore now that I know you’re a Patriots fan.
Just kidding! I love your blog 
February 7th, 2008 at 2:30 am
This is a nicely written post.
Maybe I can help you out with both of these things, since I’ve been through them both before.
I’m from Houston, and anyone from Houston can tell you about heartbreak when it comes to sports teams. Since the “Love Ya Blue” days back in the seventies, Houston has always been the “almost” team, no matter what sport.
Finally one year the Astros made it to the World Series, and…well…blew it. It was the first time they had ever been to the Series in their 44 year existence. And true to form, they choked.
It was disappointing, but in the end, I had to be happy with the fact that they had at least won the National League Pennant, and they got a chance to play in the World Series, which was more than any other team could say.
It’s the same with the Patriots. So they didn’t have a perfect season. But they did better than any other team out there, except they lost the Superbowl. It turns out that it’s the together time with your family rooting for your team that ends up being what is important. In the years to come, whenever anyone talks about when the Patriots almost had a perfect season, you will remember that you were rooting for them with your family.
And as far as falling backwards by going deeper into debt to fix your car, you can’t let that bother you. The same thing happened to me last summer, except it was my air conditioner, and it put me back all the way to start, and then some. I was worse off than when I had first started paying off my debts. But after a lot of slapping myself, someone finally pointed out that if I hadn’t been paying off my debt before that, how much worse would it have been when my AC did go out? Same with you. If you were still living how you used to, and never started paying your debts off in the first place, how much worse would it have been when your car needed repairs? Would you even have been able to make it?
And the part about you being able to say that you haven’t used credit since 2003, is that just your pride that is wounded? It really shouldn’t matter when the last time you used credit was. You can still say that you have been living responsibly since 2003, and that you have consistently made progress since then. You had an unexpected emergency, and you handled it nicely. Your savings kept you from having to finance the whole thing off and make long term payments on it. And you have a good plan for paying the remaining balance. That is very healthy.
And in fact, you did handle this one perfectly.
Because anyone can have perfect results when everything is roses. When you have situations where every choice seems bad and you have to choose the lesser of evils is when it tests you.
You’ll get out of this River Of Debt. Because it turns out that slow and steady really does win the race.
February 7th, 2008 at 4:33 am
Since my favourite football (soccer for non-Brits) team hasn’t won the title in 20 years, I’m forever saying “There’s always next season”. But as you say, I think that’s as true of life as it is of sport.
February 7th, 2008 at 9:55 am
We live just north of Boston, in Reading! We’re all still walking around dazed and confused here - what the heck!!! I couldn’t look; Mom was crying and my brother had an ulcer attack. My son called from his college in CA last night and he still “didn’t want to talk about it”. Football runs deep here, really deep.
BTW, Melrose-Wakefield Hospital is still there and it has a pretty good reputation too.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:55 am
At the start of the season, if you had given me a choice between a 66% chance of being perfect and 100% of having a Super Bowl win, I’d take my chances with being perfect. There are some 40+ teams who have won Super Bowls (counting each year as a separate team even if same franchise) - but how many have won 19 games? How many have even won 18 in a row? None.
Do you realize that the next time the Patriots play a game it will be 21 straight months between regular season losses? Their regular season record in that time? 19-0.