Not Willing to Pay the Price - a story

Monday nights I play racquetball with a group of different people. Last Monday I was with two others playing and on the first point I got tangled up with them and fell hard to the floor.  But I won the point. The next play I got knocked hard to the floor again, but won the point.  I did not win any more points. I had learned what was necessary to win a point, but decided it was not worth it.

That reminded me of our church softball team.  We got into a league that was way over our level of skill but we had a good time. We lost every game but one. In that game it was very close and in a very close collision at home plate our player was safe and that was the winning run. The only problem was that our player broke his ankle in that collision.  That was a game in the middle of the season and we did not win any more games. We had discover what it took to win, but we did not have enough members who were willing to pay the price in order to win.  We joked about that a long time. We did not have enough members to pay the price and we did not have enough players to be able to lose one a game and still have a team.

Sometimes I think that we in our affluence society forget that there is a price to every victory, there is a cost for every success, and somebody has to pay.  If we were to ever look at the big picture about who has to pay for the success, we might change the definitions of victory and success.