Going First Class

Anna enrolled in hospice on August 18, 2008. She was eighty years old, afflicted with end stage dementia, and profoundly confused. On September 2, 2008, only two weeks after Anna’s enrollment, Shasta, her hospice nurse, called and informed me that Anna was “actively dying” and that the family asked her to notify me. They didn’t request that I come but I read the invitation between the lines.

When I arrived, Anna was unresponsive and the family was at her bedside along with our chaplain, Pete. Anna’s daughter, Karen, with a heartbroken expression, reported, “She’s just not the same”. If you’ve stood at the bedside of someone dying you know how helpless and awkward it can feel. You desperately want to say something to make it easier, but it’s not supposed to be easy. However, I’ve found that it is appropriate, respectful and meaningful to celebrate a person’s life by sharing memories and stories, out loud, so the person can hear. Can you think of anything sweeter or more satisfying to hear during your final moments than your family and friends talking about what you’ve been and meant to each other? What a wonderful way to begin saying goodbye.

So I asked Karen, “Are there any sayings that your mom used to tell you when you were growing up that you will always remember?” Karen thought a minute and replied, “There are two things that mom used to say, ‘Don’t slam that door too hard because you might have to walk back through it’; and she always told me, ‘Karen, remember, it only costs 10 % more to go first class.’. “ Karen added, “I never forgot that.” And now, thanks to Anna and Karen, I don’t think I will either.

But what does it mean to “go first class”? Does it mean being better, best, first, perfect, or always winning? Jim Tressel, football coach for the Ohio State Buckeyes, wrote a book titled, “The Winners Manual For The Game of Life” (2008). It’s a condensed version of his 400 page “Winners Manual” he presents to every new freshman player. It’s a compilation of philosophical principles and practical wisdom that he’s collected during his 23 years of coaching. And surprisingly, it’s more about being “a winner in the game of life” than about winning at football.

Some may disagree, especially after Ohio State’s loss to unranked Purdue yesterday (October 17, 2009, “A day that will live on in infamy”), but I’m persuaded that Jim Tressel’s record, character and reputation rank him as a “first class” football coach, and more importantly, a first class human being. And his book has some valuable insights into what it means to “go first class”. So here are some tidbits.

Coach Tressel has studied the lives, methods and philosophies of successful coaches. One of his “heroes” is John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach of the UCLA Bruins. Coach Wooden penned his definition of “success” in his 1972 autobiography titled “They Call Me Coach”; “Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing that you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.” Coach Tressel, in his “Winners Manual” added, “…for the group”. Ponder this definition and the truths will become self-evident.

Do you see that “Going First Class”, being a “winner in the game of life”, isn’t about being best? It’s about doing and giving your best. It’s about doing whatever you put your hand to with “all your heart” (Colossians 3:23-24); not out of “selfish ambition” (Philippians 2:3), but for the highest good of those who are counting on you; who depend upon you, “for the group”.

And the true measure of success isn’t external, but internal. There’s danger in basing our value upon comparisons. It can foster either a false sense of pride or insignificance. That’s why I love the mantra that Coach Tressel has his team recite in the tunnel, just before taking the field: “I am only one, but I am one. I can’t do everything but I can do something. And the something I can do I ought to do. And what I ought to do, by the grace of God I shall do.” I believe that this is what it means to “go first class”, to be a “winner in the game of life”.

Now, for a message to us who can so quickly become armchair critics, spectators criticizing from a safe comfortable distance: “It’s not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly….who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have never known neither victory nor defeat” ---- Teddy Roosevelt.

In closing, let’s ask ourselves, if the game of life were to end tonight would we be winners? And never forget, “It only costs you 10% more to go first class.”