Lessons on Losing

and the difference between "close" and "closer."

“What’s your gut saying about the outcome?”

Cory asked the question sometime Tuesday afternoon from the driver’s seat of our trusty minivan. We spent the day together, criss-crossing our city, knocking on doors in last-ditch efforts to get people out to the polls to vote in Goshen’s municipal election.

For months I’ve heard the warnings, “Everything hinges on District 3.” “District 3 is winnable,” “Last time, District 3 was decided by just two votes.”

The pressure loomed. I’d been promised a razor-close race. “It’s a coin-toss,” I said to anyone who asked. I believed it.

I don’t know what it was, but on Tuesday, with the election in full-swing, I gave a different answer. “I think I’m going to lose and I don’t think it will be close.”

This, my friends, was my worst nightmare. I’d said all along (and meant it!) that I was at peace winning or losing, as long as it was close.

By 8:00 pm the data was in and I had lost the election by one hundred votes.

Not two. Not ten. One hundred. 42% to my opponent’s 58%. In other words, not even kind of close.