All That Glisters Is Not Gold
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Sep 2, 2008 Posted by Ned Johnson
So the Olympics are over. Some competitors surprised the world, and perhaps themselves, with their outstanding achievements. Some came short a fraction of a second, inch or point, while others missed the bar completely. To invoke the late Jim McKay, "some felt the thrill of victory, others the agony of defeat." Some came away thrilled by their experiences, even if not by their final standings. Win or lose, they can always know they were Olympic athletes. For those left unsatisfied, their greatest wish may be that they could simply run the race or play the game again. Most interestingly, some of those we think of as winners simply aren't. Greater satisfaction doesn't always seem to correlate with greater performance. Bronze can be more satisfying than silver.
In a Washington Post piece , writer Shankar Vedantam recounts the story of an Olympic runner who nearly a century ago came up short, despite being favored to win, and who took home the silver. What for many of us would seem an unbelievable and proud experience, being a medal-winning Olympian, was for him a profound disappointment that over a lifetime he has failed to shake. He reportedly has spent most of his life reliving the moment, ruminating over what he could have done differently. It turns out that this is actually a common reaction among silver medal winners. Not so gold and bronze winners. “"If you win a silver, it is very difficult to not think, 'Boy, if I had just gone a little faster at the end . . .,' " said Gilovich, who works at Cornell University. "The bronze-medal winners, some of them, might think, 'I could have gotten gold if I had gone faster,' but it is easier to think, 'Boy, I might not have gotten a medal at all!' "
Last week, I got a call from a student who was unhappy with the colleges that accepted him last year. He plans to delay college for a year and retake the SAT to have “better” choices. My suspicion is that he has looked at his peers and has seen the ones who did “better” while largely ignoring the ones who did “worse.” He isn’t happy with silver. Whether for high school students or Olympic medalists, the perceptions of “If only I had…” versus “at least I didn’t…” are based on what psychologists called upward and downward counterfactuals, effectively to what or whom people are comparing themselves. These comparisons largely constitute whether we are glass half-empty or glass half-full types. When we compare ourselves to something or someone higher, we may naturally find ourselves lacking. If we more often contemplate what we have achieved, what calamity we have avoided or the situations inhabited by those less fortunate, we may feel much more grateful and, ideally, happy.
Arguably, we use our awareness of our shortcomings to motivate ourselves to greater achievement. Unsatisfied with a B, we may work harder for an A next time. Sitting on the bench may encourage us to make improvements needed to get us into the game. High goals, even if beyond us, lead us to achieve more than would wallowing in a state of utter complacency. Robert Browning surely inspired us with "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp -- or what's a heaven for?" But, we might also heed Marilyn Wright Edelman’s admonition to not lose our sense of “enough.” If we don’t, the glass may always appear to be more half empty than half full. The other caution is that some goals simply won’t be achieved. Everyone at the Olympics planned for, worked for and hoped for victory. Not everyone won. Not everyone is going to get a 2400 or go to their dream college. Finding the balance between satisfaction with where one is and continually striving for more and greater goals is appropriately a complex but personal matter. Feeling unsatisfied, however, with the sun alone and thus pining also for the moon is surely no recipe for happiness. Silver is still way cool. And, for college admissions, there are happily many, many fine choices better than bronze even if it's a scratch, in your eyes, less than gold.