How bad do you want it

Last night I was watching high school wrestling and I heard a belligerent father yelling at his son from the bleachers, "how bad do you want it?" This phrase always catches my attention.

First of all, the correct grammar is "how BADLY do you want it." For those who weren't paying attention in 9th grade Language Arts, adverbs end in -ly.

The biggest reason this phrase catches my attention is because I often wonder what the answer is. I can't remember a time that I used this myself, but I imagine the phrase is a rhetorical question and the intent is to go deeper than surface level to touch on the drive, motivation and/or will of the athlete. I don't think it ever comes across that way, though. What I interpret time and time again is that the individual yelling assumes the athlete simply doesn't care. And maybe he doesn't. And that's alright, I think. The first thing that comes to my mind is that the parent is too pushy or too hard on their child and the kid probably doesn't care because his dad is a jerk.

I would love to see a young athlete stand-up for himself and say as a matter of fact, "I care way more than you do." Not in a confrontational way, of course, but to put the adult who is out of line in his rightful place. Chances are the athlete does care and he should care a lot more than Dad does.

It's possible that not everyone wants "it" as badly as you think, though. Some people aren't very competitive and some parents have their priorities all messed up. I hope I never say this to an athlete or one of my kids the way I hear parents yelling from the bleachers. Certainly, I hope they try their best to be their best, but I don't expect everyone to want "it" as badly as I do and I'm certainly not in a place to make a judgement on how badly someone should want something. Additionally, this is a phrase that offers nothing productive to the athlete. I'm more interested in offering words of encouragement or statements that have meaning and build people up. This is a meaningless phrase only meant to belittle and tear people down. I don't care for that.

"Set a guard over my mouth, O LORD; keep watch over the door of my lips." - Psalm 141:3