Why is it that modern day athletes, employees, students, American Idol contestants, and anyone else asked, instead of taking ownership and pride in the attempt, relishing in the challenge, yearning for a better effort, accepting personal responsibility for their lack of execution, or promoting the commitment to a life of hard work, just chalk up losses and less than their best performances to the modern day excuse: "Well, at least I had fun"?
Seems like a shallow life for young people nowadays.
well, seeing as it seems like most of your post pertains to solely american idol ( i'm not sure i've heard alan webb say he had fun after a bad race) its becasue the people that get kicked off really don't have a shot in the buisness, and so getting better really won't yeild anything worthwhile....so they had fun and are kicking in the bucket
if you don't like american idol....let it be....but get a life
Why do you feel that "relishing in the challenge, yearning for a better effort, accepting personal responsibility for their lack of execution, or promoting the commitment to a life of hard work" and "having fun" are mutually exclusive?
I think that your outlook is the one that's shallow.
I'm with you man. Everyone should hate what they do. I'd much rather hear American Idol contestants get voted off and then say "well, at least it sucked." We should all aim to hate what we do, because having fun is shallow.
Why exactly do you think that having fun is a shallow thing to achieve? I'm just now graduating from college and I'm not sure what career I'll end up in, but if I end my career saying "at least I had fun," I'll know that I lived my life the right way. What is the point of life other than enjoying your time on earth?
I think enjoying oneself in one's endeavors is an admirable quality to exhibit, but all too often the excuse for failing to achieve to one's expectations is the "at least i had fun" catch-all. It is rampant in modern day sports, workplaces, schools, and other competitive environments. When one does not achieve one's best, maybe one should look inside oneself, instead of putting on the airs of the carefree.
I don't know what sport or life you signed up for, but it sure as hell doesn't resemble the one that I signed up for.
Wow, so enjoyment, challenge, commitment, hard work, effort, responsibility, and other such motives mentioned are all superseded by fun, even by letsrunners such as the great malmo? Interesting. So I guess a police officer, soldier, minister, fireman, teacher, athlete, construction worker, peace corps volunteer, etc., should just hang 'em up if fun doesn't outweigh whatever truly drives them to do those things that are more often strenuous or difficult than "fun"?
Why do you assume that fun and all of these other things are mutually exclusive? I find winning and success to be quite fun. Whatever truly drives you should be fun.
Why would do you feel that anyone needs to hang up their job to avoid difficulty? Hard work, effort, responsibility, are all fun.
Misery is self-inflicted by and large. If you don't fix your attitude soon you'll be living the life of quiet desperation that Thoreau alluded to.
Harry Kooter wrote:
Why do you assume that fun and all of these other things are mutually exclusive? I find winning and success to be quite fun. Whatever truly drives you should be fun.
Winning and success is quite rare, in running or in life. Embrace your failures and you'll come a lot closer to ultimate success and appreciate more when it happens.
Excellent advice. Thank you.
I think that is where the confusion sets in, depending on how you were brought up, and who has influenced you. I don't know what you do, what event or sport you participate in, but can you honestly, and I mean truly, honestly say that the hours, weeks, and years of effortful training, as well as the minutes upon minutes of balls to the wall racing (or competing in your sport, if not a runner) can be culled down to a single motivation: fun? So all those coaches, athletes, threads on letsrun by guys like malmo, who promote pushing oneself, running more miles, how the distance scene fell off during the '90's and is now coming back, etc., that all comes down to "fun"? It may be more fun if you cut across the infield on the track and wait for your opponesnts while slapping yourself on your bare butt, or maybe tackling the leader in a race and giving him a noogie, but you don't do those things because you abide by the somewhat strict, "fun-restricting" rules and conventions of the competition. I'm sure you may have more fun drinking beer in a strip club instead of trainig day after day, but you choose training. So did I take one of those old Knute Rockne type speeches too seriously, or what?
I think that the journey, regardless of how difficult or whatever can be 'fun'. You are confusing the word fun with things that have to be painless, not challenging or that kind of thing. Fun is what you make of it....
In general I agree with you. Not that "fun" is inherently bad, but I disagree with the way that it has been tranformed into a moral virtue in our culture. Some aspects of life are fun and some are not so fun. Measuring the value of our experiences and endeavours by the amount of fun involved seems to me to be valuing only a part of life rather than the whole of it.
fun it is wrote:
I think that is where the confusion sets in, depending on how you were brought up, and who has influenced you. I don't know what you do, what event or sport you participate in, but can you honestly, and I mean truly, honestly say that the hours, weeks, and years of effortful training, as well as the minutes upon minutes of balls to the wall racing (or competing in your sport, if not a runner) can be culled down to a single motivation: fun? So all those coaches, athletes, threads on letsrun by guys like malmo, who promote pushing oneself, running more miles, how the distance scene fell off during the '90's and is now coming back, etc., that all comes down to "fun"? It may be more fun if you cut across the infield on the track and wait for your opponesnts while slapping yourself on your bare butt, or maybe tackling the leader in a race and giving him a noogie, but you don't do those things because you abide by the somewhat strict, "fun-restricting" rules and conventions of the competition. I'm sure you may have more fun drinking beer in a strip club instead of trainig day after day, but you choose training. So did I take one of those old Knute Rockne type speeches too seriously, or what?
So all those coaches, athletes, threads on letsrun by guys like malmo, who promote pushing oneself, running more miles, how the distance scene fell off during the '90's and is now coming back, etc., that all comes down to "fun"?
According to Malmo's above post, yes.
If you ask a kid in the middle of grueling track workout if he is having fun and he might say no. If you ask that same kid after winning a major race if the work he did was fun he might have changed his mind. Looking back on your struggles, hard work and even failures hopefully you can say , 'Yeah, that was fun'. It shows that you learned something or achieved something.
malmo wrote:
Winning and success is quite rare, in running or in life. Embrace your failures and you'll come a lot closer to ultimate success and appreciate more when it happens.
Wow, malmo, you so speak the truth. This is why I come to letsrun.com!
This is better than a AA meeting. Working on something difficult and striving to do your best, whether in your vocation or avocation, is rewarding and satisfying. That is my definition of fun