Winning and Losing Gracefully

Seems to me that we do not have the ability to win or lose, gracefully.

A lot of the political problems that we have had for the past decade or so deal directly with people who won or lost elections not being able to deal with reality. If you won, okay. If you lost, okay. Deal with it. If the other party has or doesn't have the majority, deal with it. That's life. Sticking your head in the sand and not dealing with reality not only does not help our country. It teaches our children that if you do not get what you want, you can just scream really loudly until you do get what you want or something like it.

The idea of compromise is completely lost on us today, politically and otherwise. I truly believe this bleeds over into all spheres of life. It happens on Capital Hill. It affects the way people drive and treat traffic like a game, myself included. And it teaches our youngsters that it's okay to bully your way through life. Just look at the news stories. I'm not necessarily saying that bullying is happening in greater proportions in school these days. Bullying has always been around (and it happens with people of all ages). But the affects of bullying are becoming ridiculous, particularly in our schools.

Adults, we have no one to blame but ourselves. We can blame the kiddos. We can blame the school systems and administrators. But they are learning this stuff from us.

And our inability to deal with winning and losing is what it's all about.

So next Tuesday, when plenty of people win and plenty of people lose political races, my prayer is that they deal with those results gracefully. And that we, as the public, gracefully deal with the wins and the loses, as well.