Few would disagree that one of the most annoying experiences we ever face is having a promise broken. The reality is though, as we all know, that it is often very difficult to keep promises, as someone once put it: “Promises are like babies: easy to make, hard to deliver.” [Anon] Ralph Waldo Emerson put it like this: “All promise outruns performance.”
While we have considered some awards dished out at School Sports Dinners as being inappropriate, mainly as they are individual awards in a team sport, there is another award that is equally and potentially dangerous. That is the (perhaps much-coveted) Most Promising Player award. The literary critic Cyril Connolly once made the astute observation that “whom the gods wish to destroy, they first call promising” and it has certainly been the case with many sportsmen and women over the years, who have been labelled the ‘next Andy Flower’ or the ‘next Peter Ndhlovu’. We make children believe they are the next Messi, the next Messiah. Such promises are the ‘kiss of death’.
Yet the award promises so much. It is saying this youngster is the most talented, able, gifted sportsperson; she is the one who is most likely to go far in sport. It is a wonderful compliment for anyone to receive. This child has a glittering career ahead of her. That is encouraging, flattering, uplifting, exciting. Who would not take that with pleasure? So what is the problem with it?
The first thing that is wrong with it is that the child believes it, understandably so! But as we find in a proverb: “A promise is a comfort for a fool.” Someone else once said, “I thought he was a young man of promise; but it appears he was a young man of promises.” [Anon] In an instant, the child receives both the illusion and the delusion of grandeur.
However, while we have made the promise, secondly, we are in no position to keep it. We may consider they have great promise but others most probably do not, and we will not be around to assist or defend them. At school level in particular, many players show great promise at a young age purely having developed more quickly than others. There is no promise in that.
Thirdly, and more importantly, we put extra unnecessary pressure on them by making such a claim. Now they have to fulfil all these promises in a much more competitive world. Now they have this label on them, this millstone around their neck. The spotlight of expectation shines directly on them and every move will be scrutinised and compared to their previous performances. With promise comes pressure; as Jim Rohn stated; “For every promise, there is price to pay.” Similarly, William Lyon MacKenzie pointed out that “The promises of yesterday are the taxes of today.”
A further reason why such an award is not helpful is that it compares the players, by using the words “the most”. Jim Collins, in his book ‘Built to Last’, pointed out that “Comparison, a great teacher told me, is the cardinal sin of modern life. It traps us in a game we can’t win. Once we define ourselves in terms of others we lose the freedom to shape our own lives.” One reason Collins gave is that
“Comparison entraps you in a game you cannot win.” If we want to compare our work to someone else’s, to prove we are better, then we will never win, as there will always be someone better. If we consider ourselves better (which the word ‘promising’ does indeed suggest), there are two possible
consequences. The one is that we become big-headed; the other is that we become complacent and under-perform in future. If, on the other hand, we see ourselves as being worse, there are also two possible consequences. The first is we become down-hearted and defeated, so we do not bother, or secondly, we resort to cheating to become ‘better’.
What is said of beauty may be true of success: “Beauty always promises, but never gives anything” [Simone Weil]. We might do better if we transposed the following words about business by Harold Geneen to sport: “It is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises but only performance is reality.” As Richard Paul Evans wrote in ‘Promise Me’: “Broken vows are like broken mirrors. They leave those who held to them bleeding and staring at fractured images of themselves.” The bottom line is this: we must not make promises that we cannot keep. That is a promise we must keep!
