First Runner Up
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here.
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
- some English author
Sometimes, I wonder what would have happened if Henry V’s generals had been rational. The next scene would have been the scene where Henry’s generals stand before the troops and say something like:
I have some good news and some bad news…
The bad news is, the king is dead.
The good news is, you can all go home.
The history of the world is written by the winning side. As far back as Thucydidies, who chronicled the oft quoted History of the Peloponnesian War, the winner has determined the truth of historical fact. On the other hand, most of us have never heard of Thucydidies and a recent survey of defeated candidates for the office of Mayor of Minneapolis shows that most people couldn’t pronounce Thucydidies if their lives depended on it. Let it suffice that a long time ago, in Greece, there was a major war lasting a generation between two city-states over who was going to be the tax collector of the region. It was a very famous war, at the time, if you were there. Lots of people got killed. Lots more lived. There were lots of very famous heroes.
From this day to the ending of the world, they shall be remember’d. Maybe.
As I was rifling through a cupboard the other day, I came across a certificate of sorts. The certificate declares that my daughter’s cat was judged best of show in some competitive cat competition some 6 years ago. I remember looking at this certificate, declaring that in the opinion of a team of expert judges, this cat was better than any other cat presented before the judges on that day. I looked from the certificate to the brown stain where this best of show creature had puked her lunch on my white rug, and wondered, just precisely, what it means to be best of anything? Could those judges, in their calm deliberation, envision that this most famous cat for a day would ultimately cost me thousands of dollars in vet, cleaning and other expenses? That she would often wake me up at 4 in the morning, demanding that I join the hunt with her for imaginary mice? Perhaps the judges had this in mind when they judged her best of show. Best cat, for that day…Queen for a day. Perhaps it was a well earned prize, and her stomach calmly digested fur balls while under examination. Now, half a decade later, I doubt if she would be best of show except perhaps at a fur-ball heaving competition. Yet, as I think about that certificate, with a typical sense of pride, I looked at her and said, “my you were special, once.” Once. And then what happened?
This got me to thinking about my resume. I went through it with a sense of pride noting all the accomplishments and wonderful things that I’ve done in 30 years of professional involvement in the world. Invented, wrote, directed, founded—Lots of good stuff—A veritable powerhouse of accomplishment and high honor. Except, I also remembered this meeting I had when I was an executive at a small company. I was sitting across from the CEO and the vice president of marketing. The CEO was chewing the ass off of the marketing guy. Last year, he had increased sales by 50%, but was now complaining about how sales were in a down swing and the company needed to respond to the declining market with new products and new capabilities. My job was to create the new products and new capabilities. I had just explained that the lead time for the new things was on the order of 18 months before we could bring them to market. The CEO turned to the marketing guy and said, “There is a rule in sales. It’s not sufficient to describe your successes in the past. We have long since spent that money. The rule is, this, what have you done for me lately? If you can’t get the sales numbers up to where they have to be, I’ll have to find someone who can.” I sat there in wonder. The marketing guy had been through several stages of hell with me through premature product introductions, customers who had unrealistic expectations, customer support problems that had driven two field service technicians literally to their graves, and had managed, somehow to get contracts signed, RFPs won, and checks delivered to the company coffers. His resume was chock full of accomplishment, in the past. His time of being a hero, remember’d, was past. Now he had a simple choice, walk the plank yet again and find some new customers, or be cast aside like week old Chinese food too long in the fridge for human consumption. No greater love hath he, than he who dies for his company.
As I stood in the middle of the rug, looking at this oval brown stain in a previously pristine rug, best of show, record sales, suddenly took on a new perspective. Perhaps the issue is not in the accomplishment, but in the recognition of the accomplishment… in the means by which we judge ourselves and others. If we were truly rational people, would we hang our hides out in gale force winds to see if it was truly the storm of the century? Would we really want to read a New York Times best seller and ignore number 102 on the list? By what means do we judge ourselves and others to be successful, happy, great, or even satisfied.
Back in the early ‘70s, when Microsoft was a fledgling company, there is a story that one of the programmers working for Bill Gates quit one day. As he walked out the door, in a rather informal exit interview, he shouted at Bill, “You’re an unscrupulous asshole!!! Someday, someone’s going to sue your ass!” Truer words were never said. This programmer probably regrets being no longer associated with the top 3 richest individuals on the planet. I’m sure today, he would gladly be number 4 with the problems of hiring the complete staff of several Seattle law firms to defend his honor and earning potential before some federal judge. Certainly, he’s out there, somewhere, doing some fantastic software for some fantastic company that ranks in the fortune 1000 list. Or maybe, just maybe, he’s doing what my first boss did when he found himself on the street after running a successful company into the ground, guiding tourists on canoe rides in Baja California becoming one with nature and breakfasting each morning with the scrambled eggs of endangered sea turtles.
As I stood there, looking at that oval stain, gift from the best of show, I wondered, since we know that the heroes of old ultimately vanish in the mists of time, what happens to their lieutenants and their sergeants and all those little people who stand in muddy trenches wondering who the hell Saint Crispin is, and why they’ll be remembered for eternity for loosing a few shafts of arrows at some muddy Frenchmen who can’t move horses through some bog? To understand this, I thought it might be good to first discover just who Saint Crispin was. Perhaps, an understanding of the Saint used by Henry V to rally his troops before battle would give me a better understanding of what it is that drives people to exceed, even if they don’t quite end up in best of show. Certainly, Crispin meets the criteria of Sainthood through the annals of Catholic history—beheaded by the Romans in 286 AD. Each Saint appears to be noted for some special trait, some memorable accomplishment other than martyrdom and piety. This is the essence perhaps of the inspirational message that Henry gave to his troops. Saint Crispin, patron Saint of…. cobblers, glove makers, lace makers, lace workers, leather workers, saddle makers, saddlers, shoemakers, tanners, and weavers. OK, Henry, I’ve got it. We’re gonna stand, outnumbered 20 to 1, before the French, to be placed in memory alongside the patron saint of people who make doileys. When we return to England, at least we’ll get discounts on shoes. I’d face down any 20 people hell bent on chopping me to bits for discounted leather products.
Anyone would.
I went back to contemplating my oval stain again. There surely is a place for those who are remember’d through history. Surely some future playwright will craft the story of Bill Gates, who faced down government anti-trust attorneys to bring humanity into the information age. There will be controversy for centuries over the pivotal transcripts and stories told about the great man and his contribution to society, and history. On the other hand, if you discount the money part, who would actually want to be Bill Gates? Accomplishment and motivation perhaps are the benchmarks of success, and perhaps we judge this by battles won, fortunes made, trophies collected. But what about those of us who never won the big game, who sold the stock at a loss, who dropped out of school, or were fired because we hadn’t excelled lately? Are we any less the models of life for our failure to own, marshal, and be quoted? As I looked at that stain, I thought of my daughter, now a sophomore in high school. In her class of 900 students, she hangs happily in the middle far removed from the top student, and equally far removed from the bottom student. What legacy shall I pass on to her about accomplishment, glory, honor and how history shall remember her? Certainly, she is interested in winning. For some strange reason, everyone wants to be first, best, fastest, richest. There is some ingrained joy in getting that blue ribbon and beamingly staring down those who didn’t quite run fast enough. Yesterday, her high school band came in 2nd in a competition, and once again, her ego was bruised by their collective failure to be the best at something that she has worked so hard for every day for many long months. Is she now a failure for not having heeded the call of her king to face down some bog slogging enemy?
Perhaps so. Perhaps, in the final analysis, most of our 6 billion co-inhabitants of this planet are not ready to face that blue ribbon, and we are destined for that trash heap of anonymity and obscurity. Perhaps victory and fame shall elude most of us, almost all of us, we band of brothers.
As the French slogged through the mud towards their English foes, surely they had some reason to push forward into the face of death to achieve something other than 2nd place. Yet, there is historical precedent for how to deal with the fact that you lost and someone else won. The Japanese have a word for this, seppuku. This is the time honored tradition of facing down your enemy and granting complete victory over you, by virtue of clearing yourself completely from this planet. Something, by the way, you don’t try at home without adult supervision. The ultimate problem facing the victor is cleaning up the mess left behind. So first place comes in two parts, the rewards, and the mess.
Thinking again on the rewards of success I remembered this time, long ago, when the business editor of a local newspaper wrote an article about me. I was portrayed as one of the region’s hottest up-and-coming entrepreneurs. Somewhere in the article, he made an estimate of my net worth based on records of stock ownership and the current market price for the stock. His information was faulty and he gave me a net worth 10 times what it was at the time, and 300 times what it ultimately came out to be. There I was reading with joy, this moment of victory in my life, until I read that paragraph. There was enough paper money there to advise anyone with an evil heart, that kidnapping my children was a task well worth the exercise. I talked it over with my wife and we discussed, getting an unlisted phone number, hiring a security guard for the kids, adding alarm systems for the house, placing the kids in private school—all manner of possible ramifications from a moment of over-inflated public fame. For the first time in my life, I realized that to get the blue ribbon was not necessarily the prize that I’d always dreamed of. With fame and fortune, real or imagined, also come duty and responsibility and risk. Perhaps the risk comes with the territory, but think of it this way, Bill Gates can hire the security guard, have a 40 acre home with fences, dogs, electronic surveillance and have his children home schooled by Yale scholars. I couldn’t. In fact, the only thing I could afford at that time was to get an unlisted phone number. Fortunately, my paranoia was never rewarded with an evil act against my family, but for a month I lived in fear of what might have happened.
I think on that day, I realized that sometimes, it’s actually better to be somewhere just behind the winning team. If you win the gold, someone covets your gold. If you win the silver, someone covets your sliver. If you win the bronze, well, hell, who wants the bronze other than scrap dealers? And, if you are simply the 1st runner up, you don’t even get your name in the paper. On the other hand, being 1st runner up isn’t a bad position to be in. There is certainly a sense of accomplishment, a sense of anonymity, and even if you can’t display the gold, you can certainly purchase a reasonable replica to show off to close friends.
So staring at that oval stain on the rug, I realized that the cat, best of show for a day, Queen of her house, had given me many things more than a blue ribbon and a certificate. Just the simple fact of her being, the interspecies affection between pet and pet was a simple gift unrecorded and unremembered through eternity. Whilst best of show never threw up on a judge, no judge ever had their lap invaded by this cat when the world seemed cold and distant. They never saw her purr or had her argue with you over whether or not salmon was on her menu for the day. And she, what does she know of ribbons and certificates, she can’t even read for God’s sake! It’s a good certificate, something to show when conversation grows lax. But it says nothing of the real world, where now, I must pull out a pail and a sponge and clean up the gift from best of show.
We band of brothers who never get the gold; almost all of us, we happy not so few.
