To make a long story short, I performed poorly recently when speaking to a potential client.  I was asked for a answer I was not prepared to give.  I refused to provide an answer.  In this short encounter, I was outwitted.  In the long term it means nothing, yet I felt the desire to mope.

While I stand behind my values that incented me to withhold a misleading or blatently fabricated answer, I should have been more responsive and agile on my feet.  I should have improvised, bantered, engaged in a game of rhetoric.  Life is not a joke but it isn't something to kill yourself over!  Life needs to be fun and when the screws are put to you, whining and whimpering isn't a good way to respond.  Choking is even worse. 

The room was like an interrogation room: stark white, nothing hanging, nothing on the walls, echoey.  It was a hot summer, Gerogia afternoon and the suit made things even stuffier.  What better place would there have been to shine?  I I were to shine there...  well, next time.

When I was pinned in highschool wrestling, I felt robbed. The ref called me out when I'd never even felt the mat touch my shoulder.  He clearly had not qualified a legitimate pin!  I was never pinned in a meet again (my wrestling partner was state champion, he pinned me dozens of times each day).  By and far, however, I didn't really put my heart into the game. 

I would be a much better wrestler today than I was in highschool.  I'm more focused, more determined, I understand better now what it is to compete and what it means to lose.  Losing is a temporary experience and its purpose is to teach you how to win, or more precisely, how not to lose.  Winning is overcoming adversity, not being better then the next guy.  There is always someone better.  If there weren't, it wouldn't be worth competing.  If you can exist in the future, it isn't that bad to lose, once in a great while.

This is an opportunity for personal growth.  Its the thing I am seeking, after all!  Why do people so often feel that they lack this benefit because of some external condition or situation?  I do, at least i did.  The truth is that every person has the same opportunities.  Period.  I can do the same things that Bill Gates can.  The difference is that he can do them today, right now, with little more than a phone call or a handshake.  I can do them in the future, some day,following a great amount of effort.  But if I can go far enough in the future, I'm already there!  All that's left now is the experience.