“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt, April 23, 1910

I can’t remember ever hearing or reading that statement before my Dad died this past October 29.  It obviously meant a lot to him because we found it printed in various forms among his belongings. In fact, it was framed and mounted on the wall of his garage next to other things that were meaningful to him between buckets full of old golf balls, broken tees and tools that had not seen light of day in decades.  He had another copy of the “poem” as some of our family members have come to call it in the stack of paperwork he kept close at hand next to his recliner.

Sometimes incongruous events take place in our lives that teach us valuable lessons.  Over the past few days I have been following the exploits of Blues musician as he competed in the International Blues Challenge in Memphis, Tennessee.  I don’t know the musician; I barely know the blogger that has been keeping his reader’s apprised with bits and pieces of progress reports but I have been drawn to the updates like bees to honey.  I can’t even tell you that I know much about the Blues beyond the ability to appreciate and certainly not enough to know what it takes to win a competition like this.  But as I sadly read the report this morning that the focus of these regular updates had been eliminated from the Challenge my thoughts turned to the dog-eared, yellowed version of Teddy Roosevelt’s words that my father so proudly displayed in his garage.