It was a hot, humid day in late September in Cromwell, Connecticut. My house was where I had been entranced by the television watching the Red Sox final game of the season versus the Baltimore Orioles. This final game of the season would decide if the Red Sox would make the playoffs.

The Red Sox led for most of the game and it seemed as if they would reach the playoffs again, but everything changed. The Orioles came back and won the game at the end. However hope still remained that the Red Sox could play the Tampa Bay Rays in a win-and-in game if they lost to the New York Yankees. This hope did not last for long. Within a few minutes after the deflating Red Sox game the Rays won their game in the bottom of the ninth inning on a game winning home run. My heart dropped. Everything had happened so quickly. Utter shock gave me a slap across the face.

My dad always tells me how lucky I am to see all of my favorite sports teams win championships… especially the Red Sox. I never really understood what he meant until that moment. I know that they couldn't win every year, but all the Red Sox seemed as if they were always successful. They made the playoffs almost every year it seemed. I thought that they were supposed to win, and if they didn’t it was a failure.

This mindset of being the best at everything affected me greatly. I expected to be the best at anything I did, devastation hit me when I lost, and everything occurred according to plan if I had won.. (This does happen to me occasionally now but I know how to handle myself now.) It didn’t matter if it was school, sports, or anything else.

When my team lost I started to reconsider everything. All of the times my dad had told me how lucky I was really started to kick in. I really tried to look back and realize how fortunate I was. The Red Sox had won two World Series, one in 2004 and one in 2007. I had begun to realize that I had really taken that for granted.

The next few days were kind of rough. People rubbed in the fact that the Red Sox lost. As you can imagine this made me mad, but what could I do. My team had lost and theirs hadn’t. I couldn’t do anything but walk away. I never really had been in this situation before. I had no idea of how to react. Once again I started thinking of how lucky I had really been. In the past no one really had the opportunity to tell me that my team sucked because they were really good. In fact it would probably be the other way around.

I was starting to see that everyone has to lose at some point, but I didn’t want that to happen to me. I didn’t want to know how if felt to lose. Don’t get me wrong, I had lost many times in the past and still do today. Now I didn’t know how I would react to losing because for one of the first times in my life I thought of losing as a possibility. The thought had freaked me out to be honest. I had always thought that the only option was winning and now that had changed.

Now that I saw losing as an option I had started to look back at all of the things that had happened to me. All of the times that I had won something or been the best at something had a deeper meaning to me. These memories were no longer memories of what was supposed to happen. Now these memories represented all of the good luck that I had to get to that point and even luckier to have succeeded. However this new realization of how lucky I had been in the past was bigger than just competitions. I really realized how lucky I was to have a great family and people around me.
Before that Red Sox loss I had a lot of great things that I didn’t appreciate. I started to become mad at myself for taking so many things for granted in the past, like having food to eat every day. I just thought that things worked that way. I had thought that I was supposed to have all of these great things. Meanwhile I had never really thought about how many people were starving in this world.

Everything that happened to me after that moment particularly in that week that followed meant more to me. When someone did anything for me I said thank you or when I asked someone for something I said please because the thought that they didn’t have to do this for me really had a new meaning. I absolutely am more appreciative now than I ever was in the past. When something goes my way now, instead of seeing it as what was supposed to happen, I am able to think of how lucky I was to have something go my way. I see every scenario as an opportunity where I am going to do the best that I can and see what happens. Then if I do happen to win or do something good it feels a lot more rewarding.

I have realized that having the mindset that you have to be the best at everything and things need to go your way seems selfish and abstract. Today if someone was walking down the hallway and told me everything is supposed to be great for them I’d laugh at them.

Looking back, I really overreacted when the Red Sox lost. To let something that I had no control over effect my life so much seems extreme to me now. However, I’m glad it changed me like this. I like who I am today, and as crazy as it seems, I don’t know if I would be this person if the Red Sox hadn’t lost that game.