by: Joelle Charbonneau
There is this weird trend that I don’t understand – giving
kids trophies for just showing up to their sporting event or whatever other
activity they’re in. They show up. They get a trophy. For….showing up. Which really means the parent probably deserves
the trophy because they’re the one who brought the kid to the event.
When I was a kid (back in the days of big eighties hair and
New Kids On The Block), you didn’t get a trophy for getting dressed in the
morning and being dragged to your activity.
You had to earn it. Oh – don’t
get me wrong…at the end of whatever sporting season you would get a certificate
signed by your coach saying you were a part of the team, but you didn’t get a
trophy. Trophies were a big deal. Trophies were earned not because you simply
showed up – you practiced hard, you improved and you put that effort into play
and won. The trophy rewarded those
efforts and getting that trophy meant something. Not simply that you had won – because – duh –
winning is kind of a huge reward in itself.
NO…the trophy was a reward for all the things that went into the
victory. The practice. The frustration. The striving to be better. The failures (because as we improve there are
always failures). And the ability to
pick oneself up after disappointment and get back to work.
I guess I’m thinking about this participation trophy thing a
lot because of the Olympics. I love the
Olympics. I love the celebration of hard
work and dedication and the striving for one’s best even though the odds are
stacked against you to win anything.
Showing up – being part of the Olympics is its own reward. That’s the trophy and for the majority of the
athletes that go to the Olympics, the experience and memory of that experience
is the only reward they will take away from the Olympic village. They know that going in. They know winning a medal only happens for a
small number of the athlete’s there. But
that doesn’t stop them. And when they
win a medal – the Olympic version of a trophy – it means more because they had
to do more than just show up to receive it.
They had to be their very best.
So, I guess my point is – not everyone deserves a
trophy.
Sorry! I don’t think
it helps build self-esteem. Kids
understand that they won it for doing nothing.
What it does is build an expectation that they simply have to show up in
order to be rewarded. No other effort is
required.
Um...NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!
I’m sorry, but effort is required in life and sometimes the effort isn’t
rewarded by a big shiny trophy.
Sometimes the effort and the learning and the accomplishment needs to
serve as its own reward. Because it IS a
reward.
This “win a trophy for showing up” attitude isn’t just seen
in kids’ sports. I see it
everywhere. Parents who believe their
kids shouldn’t be penalized for not doing their homework on time…after all…they
showed up to class. College kids who
complain that they aren’t getting the education they want, but don’t bother to
talk to their advisors or to do more than the bare minimum to pass the classes
they don’t like. And writers who feel as
if just because they wrote a book they deserve to make a million dollars.
Yeah – you had to know that this was going to swing back
around to writing.
When I started writing, I didn’t go into it with the idea
that I would be published or that it would become a career. I wanted to write a story. So I did.
It was bad, but it was written.
Did I know it was bad when I wrote it?
Of course not! I was proud of
that book. When people said I should try
to have it published I thought, “Yes! I
should.” And I have the rejections to
prove that I tried.
That book was bad. I
showed up. I did some work. But I didn’t deserve the proverbial trophy. So, I had a choice. To keep writing or to walk away. There wasn’t any question in my mind what to
do. I sat down, opened a new book and
got to work. For years, I went to
conferences and writer meetings. I wrote
hundreds of thousands of words. I
entered contests and won none of them. I
queried more books and got rejected.
There were no trophies for me. No
positive public acknowledgment of my work.
Not a single one. But still I
showed up. Because I wanted to be
better. I wanted to push myself to be
the best writer I could. To me…being a
writer was a lot like being at the Olympic Games. I was in the door. I was competing – not with other writers, but
with myself. And it was that competition
– that striving to become better – that was the ultimate goal.
With the rise of self-publishing (and I am in favor of
self-publishing so this isn’t about whether or not you should
self-publish…those kinds of posts have been written by others way better
informed and articulate than I on the subject), the attitude of “I showed up so
I should win a trophy” seems to have infiltrated the writing community. I’ve met dozens of writers who believe that
just because they wrote a book they deserve to be published. They deserve
the trophy. They showed up. They wrote words. They want to be published and have hundreds
and thousands of readers and they want it now.
This attitude isn’t indicative of all writers. Not even close. But, I have seen the “I deserve a trophy” attitude become more and more prevalent in online
discussions and in my face to face conversations with other writers. In those moments, I see people who are so
concerned with how fast they can get the trophy that they discount the journey
to get it.
The journey is important not just the destination. It is in the journey that we learn. We grow.
We become better. As a writer
that journey is about learning the craft and the business and understanding
your voice. The journey is filled with
triumphs big and small, terrible failures and low moments where you feel
incredibly alone and without skill, and quiet moments of success when you least
expect it. It is that journey not the
trophy at the finish line that turns aspiring writers into authors. The trophy is meaningless without the
journey. But, I would argue the journey
has value above measure even when the writer never holds the trophy aloft.
When I wrote my first novel, I was proud of showing up at my
keyboard every day because there was nothing to make me. There was no reward other than the desire to
push myself. There wasn’t a trophy that
I could hold aloft and show to the world.
There was just me and the blank page and the desire to see what I was
capable of.
Are there trophies now?
Well, I guess so because there are books. Shiny, wonderful books that I am incredibly
proud of. Books that I love and that I
wouldn’t trade for anything. But there’s
something they don’t tell you about trophies.
Trophies are acknowledgements of achievements that are in the past. They
are shiny and fun to look at, but those moments are done. The real question is – what are you going to
do in the future?
Admire your trophies or sit down and get to work on a new
journey where there is no guarantee of a trophy just for showing up and only
the promise of learning during a new adventure?
I’m sitting down to work.
How about you?
