A Story about Spike

Spike wanted to be great at Magic. He wanted to play in the Pro Tour.

To play in a Pro Tour you must be invited, and Spike's best shot was to win a Pro Tour Qualifier. These were large tournaments with a lot of serious players all competing for the same single invitation. This was Spike's goal and he started working towards it.

He studied the game, studied the formats, and played a lot of Magic. He worked hard at improving his understanding of the game and his play skills, and he began to get pretty good. Months passed then a year. He enjoyed seeing his progress and was driven by the thought of reaching his goal and proving to himself that he could achieve what he set out to do.

Then things got difficult. Winning a local Friday Night Magic wasn't a problem for someone as dedicated as Spike, but winning a PTQ was another story. Now Spike had to beat a hundred other Spikes. You see, Spike's goal was difficult to achieve, but that's why it appealed to him. Being great, by definition, is difficult.

Spike was down, but not out. He had been placing towards the middle of his PTQs recently, but he felt like this was his day. He sat waiting for other players to show up. The event was at a comic shop he'd been to before. The format was his best and he was shuffling up what he believed was the best deck. He felt confident as the tournament organizer called out the starting matchups.

He lost four matches in a row and dropped from the tournament. He hated losing, but the more he thought about it the more upset he became because he realized how poorly he played, how many mistakes he made, and how badly he misjudged the format. He put so much time and energy into this and he failed. He failed to do what he set out to do. He tried, so very hard, to win and he lost. He was not great. He was average or worse and he began to doubt himself.

One thing Spike hadn't thought about much until now was his natural ability. Other people were smarter than him. The guys winning these tournaments could get farther with less work. Maybe he was trying to fit a square peg into a round a hole. Maybe he should give up.

He thought about it a while. Yeah, there were people smarter than him, and yeah, there were people who could win without even trying, but he couldn't do anything about that. He failed and had to decide whether he was going to give up or keep trying. In fact, he decided he didn't really care if his natural abilities were suited for winning at Magic or not. He still wanted to win. He still wanted to reach his goal, and he had to keep going. But he realized he had to do something else also. If he wanted to win he couldn't make the same mistakes he made that day.

Spike's failure was painful because he tried so hard to succeed, but through that failure he learned things that he couldn't have learned otherwise. Instead of viewing failure as his own inability and giving up he decided to learn from his mistakes and keep working towards his goal.

In this way he continued on. He still made mistakes, he still lost, but he learned, and he succeeded. He got that invitation to the Pro Tour.