Laugh It Off and Keep Swinging

Two words is all it takes to begin to separate and categorize people in terms of whether they are true genre/comic/sci-fi/fantasy nerds or not. Just two words need be written or spoken that will either bring a smile to someone’s face…those who are steeped in geek-speak lore…or a befuddle look of confusion…those whose interests perhaps have remained a bit more grounded.

Kobayashi Maru

Are you smiling…or are you confused?  

The explanation I am about to share will either be a recap for you, or fresh information, but it is important nonetheless to overall topic of this article, so please read on!

The Kobayashi Maru is a legendary training exercise for young Starfleet cadets within the fictional universe of Star Trek.  

When you are in the officers program, studying to command a starship of your own, one of your final exams is to act as the captain of a simulated ship’s bridge, complete with a crew of actors, and lead your team on the rescue mission of a space freighter, the titular Kobayashi Maru, filled with civilians who have issued a distress call. Their ship has struck a mine and is rapidly losing power to its life support systems, which would end the lives of everyone on board.  It would seem to be a straight forward task, and certainly part of the responsibility of the peacekeeping Starfleet mission, to take the appropriate measures and offer aid to stranded innocents.

The trickier part of the test is that the Kobayashi Maru is apparently stranded on the other side of the Klingon Neutral Zone, which means crossing over that line to rescue the freighter would be a violation of a longstanding treaty, an act tantamount to declaring war between humans and the Klingon military.

(I warned you we were going to go deep into nerdery!)

If the cadet in command decides to violate the neutral zone and rescue the Kobayashi Maru, they are warned when they cross the line by a crew member giving them a final chance to turn back. If they persist, in short order the distress signal from the freighter stops and a carefully laid ambush of Klingon battle cruisers is revealed. Outgunned and surrounded, the simulated Starfleet ship is gradually “destroyed” with all crew members lost, there is nothing the captain-in-training can do to save their ship from this fate.

If the captain decides to not rescue the stranded, dying civilians, there are also extreme and unavoidable negative consequences such as the crew mutinying over leaving innocents to die, the violation of Starfleet policies regarding rendering aid to distressed ships, or even a Klingon invasion into Starfleet space due to provocation represented by the Kobayashi Maru being in their territory in the first place.

In other words, the Kobayashi Maru is a test that cannot be “won.” Every decision results in failure, and the point of the entire test is solely to examine and analyze the character of the subject when faced with a no-win scenario. You can follow the rules and lose, or you can go rogue…and still lose.

Do they act nobly? Do they act self-sacrificially? Do they act with integrity, or aggression? Are they foolhardy, or do they listen to experienced counsel when it is offered?

The whole idea is to evaluate who a person really is when the chips are all down, and every path seemingly leads to failure.  It is at those times that emotions are heightened, decisions typically come quickly from the gut, and you find out who people really are at their core. 

Famously, it was the iconic Enterprise captain, James T. Kirk, who actually found a way to beat the Kobayashi Maru test, as revealed in a scene within the movie “Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan”.  

Kirk is apparently stranded on barren moon with some of his crew, as well as his son, when it is revealed that, in order to not suffer defeat, as a cadet he reprogrammed the computers to make it possible to actually rescue the helpless ship.

His son scornfully accuses Kirk of cheating, to which the captain replies that he merely changed the conditions of the test, and for his efforts he received a commendation for original thinking. When pressed further to consider the fact that his actions mean that he has avoided the most important aspect of the evaluation…who you are in times of seemingly unavoidable failure…Captain Kirk replies that he doesn’t believe in the “no-win scenario” ending the conversation with one final, simple, thought:

"I don’t like to lose.”

Do you enjoy losing?

Does anyone?

I can tell you that when my Kansas City Chiefs do their all too typical prime time melt down, as they have done on two occasions already this season, at our home field no less, I was most certainly NOT having an enjoyable time.

Failure is not something anyone really has a good time contemplating, and some people are even paralyzed from acting because of habitual, chronic fear that something will inevitably go wrong, mistakes will be made, and/or defeat is the only end to the road they are considering traveling.

One of the things that Star Trek fans, including myself, loves about the character of Captain Kirk is his ability to refuse to ever be defeated, always finding a way to cheat the no-win scenario and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. In point of fact, even at the end of The Wrath of Khan (spoiler alert) when his best friend Spock dies in an act of complete self-sacrifice saving all other crew members on board the Enterprise, Kirk only felt the sting of that loss until the very next movie in the series, where Spock is once again returned to life.

That’s the way the movies work many times. The protagonist is painted into a corner, odds are against them, there seems to be no way to win and, whether through ingenuity, luck or deus ex machina, things seem to work out, even if at the last minute, and victory is secured.

The problem is, we don’t live in the movies.

I would wager that all of us would share Captain Kirk’s sentiment. We, none of us, like to lose. What we do not share with him is the ability to have scriptwriters ensure that our story never encounters true or lasting failures.

Sometimes we do, in fact, suffer defeats.

I’ve always been more of an NFL fan than an MLB follower. While I have enjoyed going to see major league baseball games live, watching on TV has never held my attention the way a fast paced, scoring filled football game has.

Fairly recently, however, I was speaking with Dirk, one of our Production Specialist here in the office and an avid baseball fan, about the sport and he said something that stuck in my brain and made me start to do a lot more research into the science, strategy and, yes, psychology of playing the game.

“Baseball is a game of managing failure.”

That was Dirk’s comment, and when he said it, I was initially puzzled. He went on to talk about the fact that, in Major League Baseball, having a batting average of .300 is considered very good. When you stop to think about what that means, that your batting average is the number of times you have successfully hit the ball versus the number of times you have been at bat, it means you are considered a solid batter when you are hitting the ball 30% of the time you step to the plate…or, conversely, when you are failing 70% of the time you are at bat!

I had to let that sink in for a moment.

How demoralizing would it be for any of us if we were told that success for any and all of our principle undertakings would look like that? If it were explained to you that you would be doing well just to reach a level where you are failing at your primary goals 70% of the time!

One article I read on the subject talked about the fact that even the poorest free throw shooters typically make about 60% of their free throughs, and even some of the worst field goal kickers still manage to hit 80-90% of their attempts. A third string quarterback in the NFL can normally make half of their throws. The greats that have played baseball through the years have to deal with the fact that even at the height of their prowess, batting .400 means they are still missing their goal 60% of the time. Piling on top of that the fact that even those that attain superstar status can go through slumps where they are actually failing to hit the ball 90% of the time, and Dirk’s words become even more powerful. If you don’t understand how to manage times of failure, and not lose hope for the future and/or drive to keep taking swings…then baseball likely isn’t the sport for you.

It was former major league catcher and team manager, Joe Girardi, who once said of his team, 

“What are you when you struggle? That’s what these guys have to find out.”

That’s the same question that the Kobayashi Maru test is trying to answer.

That’s the question about life that the sport of baseball makes us face.

That’s the question that sits at the heart of this “Long Winded” memo.

Who are you when you struggle?

If we can all admit that, unlike the movies, we experience at least the occasional failure, then it seems like we must learn to not be derailed by that fact, instead learn to manage it, and keep stepping to the plate to swing at the very next pitch.

There isn’t one of us that hasn’t had had down days, made a bad decision, made an errant comment, lost their cool, stepped out of line, behaved out of character, tripped over their own feet or whiffed on a fastball. I’ve been there, and you’ve been there…to pretend otherwise is simply being na?ve or willfully ignorant.

In 1991 I had picked up a CD of a musician named Bryan Duncan called “Anonymous Confessions of a Lunatic Friend,” based on the title track that I had heard played on the radio. Duncan was a Contemporary Christian artist, one that seamlessly blended together to stylings of blue-eyed soul, funk, pop and rock in his own unique sound. He was an extremely accomplished keyboard player and was a complete ball of barely contained energy when performing live. His songs could be humorous, toe-tapping, dynamic and thought provoking and I ended up, through the decades, continuing to buy his albums as he released them. Throughout his career he has been the recipient of 4 Dove awards and been nominated for multiple Grammy Awards.

During the height of his popularity, within the Christian community in the mid to late nineties, he was touring so much that he failed to recognize that his life was coming apart at the seams. He felt the pressure of beating previous CD sales from the business side of the entertainment field, and the way in which to stay up and relevant is being out in the public eye, building your brand, more live shows, more time away from home performing for fans and prospective fans.

It was during this time that, many years later in an interview with the magazine, The Christian Examiner, Duncan said, “The bigger you are, the more empty spaces there are.” His marriage dissolved, he fell into self-medicating addiction, he became resentful and arrogant. Eventually he found himself in rehab, contemplating suicide and wondering how it all went so wrong.

Looking back on that time, in that same article, Duncan says:

“I think of all the years I expounded Scripture through music and talked about God’s marvelous grace and those kinds of things. I never had much experience on it. I just borrowed what I said and I just cut and pasted what needed to be there to acceptable in Christian circles…I preached to thousands and lost my own soul.”

Bryan Duncan was a man facing the Kobayashi Maru…trying to manage failure, struggling in a slump and striking out in every direction.

Duncan was the son of a pastor, and a formerly successful Christian artist, who now found himself at the crossroads of a crisis of faith, one where he even had those within the Christian community that he had ministered to for so many years now turning their back on him.  Apparently, the audiences he had played to had very little patience or understanding of how to manage failures. Certainly it was clear they were also devoid of the true meaning and power of grace and mercy.

When I learned of Duncan’s story, it made me instantly recall one of my favorite tracks on “Anonymous Confessions of a Lunatic Friend”, a powerful song titled “We All Need”. The lyrics took on a whole new and powerful meaning, considering his story, as I considered them.  

Here’s an excerpt (emphasis mine):

From a cardboard hovel in a darkened street

To the well-lit windows of a penthouse suite

All are desperate souls with a human fate

And we protect ourselves within the walls we make

 And we all feel lost sometimes

And we all feel hurt inside

And we all cry and we all need

The redeeming love of Jesus

 And I was raised on the lessons of the victory speech

And I fought for the standards that I could not reach

And I hold my tongue when the pain is great

And I cover my tears as we celebrate

 While a private war rages with the fear and the doubt

As I try to run faster to find a way out

I'm convinced if I stumble they'll just cast me aside

And mock at my weakness and shatter my pride

 'Cause I've watched as we've stoned

The more hesitant soul

So we all must remember it's still God's grace

We all need to know

We all feel lost sometimes

And we all feel hurt inside

And we all cry and we all need

While the song was written long before Duncan faced his own challenges, it seems very prophetic in its sentiment.

He speaks of the fact that every one of us has spent, or is spending, time dealing with our human frailties and failures, and that many times we find ourselves striving for personal standards that even can beat ourselves up for not reaching. Even more poignantly, he describes the fact that when we stumble, we hold our very human reactions, even breakdowns, in check because the callousness of people, who don’t know our circumstances or challenges, can rear their ugly heads and beat us down even farther.

Have you ever felt that way when you hit the inevitable slump at times in life? Have you suffered in silence, kept it all inside? Set huge goals that you struggled to attain?

How do you get out of the slump…manage the failures?

It was July of 1928 that Major League Baseball legend, Babe Ruth, wrote a column in the national newspapers addressing a question that he said kids kept on asking him in letters that they would write.  

“What do you do to get out of a slump?”

He answered it by saying the following (emphasis mine):

“I just stay in there and keep on swinging. The worst thing about a slump is that fellows get their spirit down when one comes along. Slumps come to everyone…I don’t know what makes them. No one does. But, I do know that there is nothing to do but stay in there and keep trying. And, after a while they go away just as quickly as they come. There’s no explaining a slump and no way to keep one from coming.  All you can do is laugh it off and keep swinging.”

Ladies and gentlemen, once again, this is the wisdom contained within the psychology of baseball.

There is no way to keep from hitting slumps, from struggling and stumbling, from losing as many as you win, or facing up to the failure of attaining a goal. At a certain point we have to realize that these times in our lives are positively and powerfully a test of character.  It’s about determining who we are when the chips are down, when all avenues seem to lead to defeat.

• Like Captain Kirk, will we try to cheat our way through? Fake it, until we make it? Try to change rules to avoid experiencing the bitter taste of what it means to lose? Remembering that we are not characters in a script, having our loose ends and times of difficulty worked out for us, choosing this path is more than problematical.  It ends with us becoming shallow, thin skinned and unable to cope with life when it refuses to play by our rules. We can’t grow, because we live in a mental fantasyland that says our distaste for losing means we don’t have to deal with the emotional impact of loss itself. We instead simply ignore those times of defeat, telling ourselves nothing happened, and denying ourselves from learning any lessons that falling short can teach us. Captain Kirk makes for a great fictional starship captain but emulating his character can stunt our growth to a very unhealthy degree.
• Like Bryan Duncan, will we internalize everything, holding it inside when the chips are down for fear of what being vulnerable and breaking down would cause others to say about us, or do to us? Will we silently struggle, trying to uphold standards that we can’t ever reach, and not give ourselves a break to be human when things do take a turn towards the slump? Taking this road is a sure way to find ourselves in a situation where the empty spaces of our lives begin to swallow all that we have to still be grateful for, and we lose touch with the grace and mercy that must be extended to each of us as fallible human beings. Choosing to go this way can quickly place us in an emotional and mental breakdown, wondering how we got there, despondent, bitter and defensive. In this scenario, instead of losing out on learning like a Captain Kirk response, we instead let the loss eat us up inside and hollow us out because we have internalized it in silence like a cancer.
• Like Babe Ruth, will we learn that no one is immune to the slumps, to facing a no-win scenario, to missing a goal, making a mistake or facing a failure, and we must learn how to continue to find a source of joy (“laugh it off”) and then get back up, dust ourselves off, learn tough lessons and keep on moving forward (“keep swinging”). In order to do that, we have to learn how to manage failure like a big leaguer. We have to answer the question of who and what we are when we struggle, because nothing reveals our true character like the pressure of defeat, stress, anxiety and loss. Nothing gives people a better look into who we really are as the times when it seems like the chips are down.

Easier said than done sometimes, I completely understand. When you are the one facing the failure, when the strikes keep coming and the “Outs” are piling up, no amount of “Buck up, little camper” speeches make the time in the slump any easier or shorter.

But, ask yourself, who and/or what you really are in the deepest part of your core, and then…when you are trying to pull yourself through a Kobayashi Maru, a slump or a failure…consider some advice taken directly from The Great Bambino, Babe Ruth himself, throughout his years of ups and downs on the Major League stage.

1.) “Never let the fear of striking out keep you from coming up to bat.”

If you let the possibility, or reality, of a failure keep you from continuing to step back up to the home plate of life, you have condemned yourself to live forever in the dugout, watching everyone else participate in the game. Whether or not you struck out a long time ago, or just painfully recently, the goal is to keep yourself in the game and not let fear glue you to the bench when the next opportunity comes up to take another swing. Never stop taking every chance you are blessed with to size up the next throw and swing with all your might. Ruth once was once asked how to hit home runs and he responded by saying:

“I swing big, with everything I’ve got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.”

Living timidly, living in fear, living small means you might avoid some strikes, but it also means you’ll never, ever know what it feels like when you connect mightily, hearing the crack of the bat as it all comes together and the ball sails out of the park.

Don’t let the fear of failure, keep you from getting back up swinging again and again because…

2.) “Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.”

Babe Ruth new that the more times he had to take a swing, the more he increased his chances of making that perfect impact resulting in a score. The odds were in his favor, if he kept trying, that somewhere along the line it would all come together.  

It’s the same way with us, for every time you make a mistake, if you learn from it instead of ignoring it or denying it, and keep trying, the odds are in your favor that you will get better and better which will eventually result in a success!  

Nelson Mandela once said, “I never lose. I either win or learn.” Every strike is a lesson that, when taken to heart, can get us that much closer to success. Face the defeat, stand up to the slump, and I promise you, you’ll eventually hit your home run!

3.) “It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.”

Grit, determination, persistence, willful, dedication, conviction, tenacity, resolve…these are words that very often apply to those among us that end up achieving a measure of renown in whatever industry, goal or dream they set their mind to.  

Most overnight successes are anything but.  It might seem like they appeared out of nowhere when it comes to landing on our radar, but more often than not, what we don’t see are all of the long nights and endless days that they struggled, fought, persevered and weathered through in order to rise to the level of success they attained. History is replete with folks that endured failure after failure, defeat after defeat, but who never gave in to that seductive inner-monologue that beckons us to throw in the towel. We can find ourselves trying to justify giving up because of situations in the past that didn’t turn out, times that we tried and lost, and our mind convinces us that there is no reason not to expect all future efforts to turn out the same way.

That’s a dirty lie.

Past defeats have no power to create present or future failures, remember that, if nothing else. Do not let yourself off the hook of refusing to quit simply because you got banged up in the past…you can’t change that former fall, but you can keep working to ensure a future success. Spend your time focused on what you CAN affect and stop letting what you CAN’T do anything about keep you down. 

4.) “The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.”

This final piece of advice from “The Sultan of Swat”, on how to pull out of the slump and shake off a defeat, reminds us all that we don’t have to face ups and downs in a solitary fashion. While all of us have moments in our lives where we must stand and learn our own individual lessons, grow in a singularly personal way, that doesn’t mean that, when all is said and done, you must endure everything as an island unto yourself. The final key to pulling yourself back from the slump is to make sure you are constantly and consistently building a team of friends and family that watch your back, lift you up, encourage you to keep going and never let you give up on yourself.

Having the discernment to know when to seek out their counsel, when to rest in their support, and when to let them bind your wounds, is what makes a person wise. There is no shame in recognizing that you can’t do it all apart from some assistance, inspiration and solace. No one should have to carry the weight of the load by themselves, all the time.  

When the stumble is unavoidable, when fall occurs, reach out to your team. If people don’t believe in you, if they turn their back on you, if they only tell you what you want to hear or if they can’t take the time to listen and offer wise counsel…they aren’t a part of your team. Remember that.

Just this past weekend my youngest daughter had her final band competition. Just about every Saturday for the last couple of months the Dunlap Marching Eagles had been participating in local or regional competitions and cleaning up, typically sweeping every category within their division. This time, however, it was a statewide meet, which meant that bands from all over Illinois, including large schools in Chicago, gathered at Illinois State University and put on their shows.

McKenna felt certain that at the very least Dunlap would win high enough honors in their division that they would end up competing in the finals at the end of the evening. My wife and I were there, we saw all of our division rivals, and every one of them were exceptionally good. The Marching Eagles put on an outstanding show, no huge, visible flaws, everything seemed to go exactly as it had when they had been dominating all of the previous shows they had been in.

Finally, the judges read the winners for our division, and Dunlap failed to secure a single award. Nothing for color guard, nada for percussion, zip for winds, zero for visual artistry and they didn’t place at all, let alone garner a spot in the finals.

We went to pick McKenna up, signing her out so she could leave with us to get some dinner and go home, and when she saw her older sister, Maggie, she broke down in tears, feeling more than disappointed…she was defeated.

After letting her have her moment to cry and get it out, I took a moment to hold her face in my hands and have her look in my eyes. My advice, in that moment, was to not let the defeat of the day rob her of the fact that this season had seen her do things she had never thought she would ever do, like learning to dance, performing in front of thousands of people, and winning a multitude of awards. I wanted her to know that there was absolutely no reason to feel any shame from the fact that they, as a team, had competed hard, done their best and represented their school exceptionally well. My last words, after I hugged her tight, were to not let the thoughts right at that moment of defeat, crush the truth that she knew in her heart: That it had been a wonderful season, and that next year they would be back to compete with all of the knowledge they had taken away from the experiences they had had, even including the loss of the day.

She needed to laugh it off, remembering everything there was to have joy in, and then prepare herself to step to the bat the next time her number was called and keeping swinging away with everything within her.

Maybe you’re there today too. Maybe this entire article was written just for you. Maybe you are feeling like you are fighting a slump, sitting in a place of defeat.

Do…not…give…up. Do not forget all that there is around you that gives you joy. Do not hesitate to get back to the plate, when you are ready, tap it with your bat and get ready to swing for the fences.  

This is your moment of character testing…your Kobayashi Maru…who will you choose to be when you struggle?