With Every Mistake We Must Surely Be Learning

Congratulations to Mr. Andrew Tuegel for correctly naming "All Along the Watchtower" by Bob Dylan and countless others as the Sunday Song of the Day.

I'll jump right into it today: I root for Tiger Woods. Now, many of you who know me might say, "Justin, isn't that equivalent to rooting for the Yankees, Wal-Mart, and Microsoft? What's the fun in cheering for the guy who always wins?" Well, here's the thing, he doesn't always win. I think I saw more yesterday about the guy than I have in many of his dominating victories.

You should know that I usually only watch four golf tournaments per year, the so-called Majors, or the Masters, U.S. Open, British Open, and PGA Championship respectively. As has been the case in the last decade, Tiger Woods is often at the top of those tournaments. Sometimes he wins in simply dominating fashion, particularly the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach in 2000, where he won by 15, yes 15, shots. Tiger is usually this stoic figure striding down the fairway on some inevitable march towards the history books, but there are those moments, such as occurred yesterday, where he lets us get a small peak into his psyche.

Yesterday as he walked towards the 18th green, knowing that he had been beaten by a relative unknown named Zack Johnson, you could see the wheels turning in Tiger's head. It was almost as if a cartoon bubble was attached to his head that contained the words, "This just doesn't happen to me," but it did, and that's where I think the lesson is to be learned.

It seems that the true lesson of greatness is learning to live what Kipling described midway through the poem "If", which I posted last week. "If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same." That's it. That is a lesson that cuts across every field of human endeavor. I was reminded of the same lesson when I was reading John Adams by McCullough. The true mark of greatness is not always in our triumphs, in our successes. Often the distinguishing characteristic of those who will be remembered is that they carried on in an indomitable way, even in the face of great adversity.

In his own way, Tiger embodies that in my mind. Today in golf, he is without peer. Sure, you may have Zack Johnsons and other figures who come out of the woodwork from time to time, but often, Tiger's greatest competitors are the history books. The reason that I root for Tiger is that even though he suffers these weeks where the moment slips away, he continues to work, continues to steel himself, and continues his inexorable journey towards the pinnacle.