Theodore Roosevelt’s words have been quoted so often they risk becoming decorative: “It is not the critic who counts . . . .” Not the one who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena.
We repeat it. We nod at it. We applaud it.
But I’ve been thinking about something Roosevelt didn’t explicitly say.
The critics are often silent—utterly silent—until something broken begins to be fixed.
No one holds a symposium on a ruin.
No one drafts a position paper on an empty field.
No one convenes an emergency meeting about a dream that never leaves the ground.
But let someone pick up a shovel. Let someone repair what everyone else had accepted as irreparable. Let someone breathe life into what had become a monument to resignation.
Then the voices come.
And sometimes, yes, there is something noble in that. When a singer is nearly perfect, the smallest adjustments feel urgent. When a runner is near the finish line, the crowd shouts louder. The closer someone gets to success, the more precise our suggestions become. There is, at times, a sincere desire to help them cross the last inches.
But there is an uglier dynamic, too.
There is something in human nature that remains apathetic toward failure but becomes animated—suddenly articulate, suddenly principled—when someone steps into the arena and begins to succeed at what others already decided could not be done.
Social scientists have a term for part of this: Tall Poppy Syndrome. When a poppy grows taller than the rest, it is cut down—not because it is diseased, but because it stands out. Success becomes a provocation to mediocrity. Distinction becomes an indictment of the status quo. The tall poppy does not accuse anyone with words; it accuses by existing.
And so we cut at it.
I picture a city lot—eight-foot weeds tangled in chain-link, trash caught in the fence, pollinating the neighborhood with their annual noxious invasion. For years it stands there. Neighbors sigh about it. “The city should do something.” “Someone ought to mow that.” A stranger comments on the blight, and blame circulates politely, but no one moves.
The weeds offend no one deeply enough to act.
Then one day an old man in overalls appears.
Slowly—painfully slowly—he begins clipping. He frees vines from the fence and stacks them. Days become weeks. The image unfolds in slow-motion exposure: brush cut back, fence revealed, grass mowed along the perimeter. A path carved down the middle. Beds formed. Mounded rows planted. A sprinkler laid. Order rising where chaos once reigned.
The lot that attracted nothing but neglect begins attracting attention.
Soon the air changes. Honeybees trace invisible highways between blossoms. Butterflies lilt and dart from plant to plant. The scent of rot gives way to turned soil and damp earth, then to the green fragrance of new growth—flowers opening, fruit beginning to form.
But . . . .
And here’s the sad part—Nothing can flourish that easily.
Questions that were never asked before now echo down the street.
“Does he even own that property?”
“Is that permitted in this HOA?”
“Who’s paying for the water?”
“I’ve never seen tomatoes grown here like that.”
“That’s the wrong kind of weed barrier.”
“Does that guy even have a job?”
For ten years the lot rotted in peace.
For a few weeks of progress, it is scrutinized.
Soon the city arrives—with citations about fence height. The water company tapes a plastic bag with a bill to the gate. The absentee owner—a corporation who never touched the soil—files an injunction against unlawful usage.
The old man gathers his rake and hoe. He pulls his straw hat lower over his eyes and shuffles away.
And the story unwinds in reverse.
A year later, the weeds are eight feet high again. Trash clings to the fence. And the neighborhood returns to its previous equilibrium—not hopeful, not indignant—just resigned.
It was safer when it was ugly.
And what was safer? Apathy. Status quo. All the consciences pricked by the old man’s diligence can now settle back into the malaise of acquiescence.
Because that acquiescence has come from failure . . . . Failure on the heels of great effort.
There is so much vulnerability wrapped up in trying. So much capital of risk and hope and exposure. When we pour ourselves into a thing and it fails, it wounds us. Eventually we bury it. We close the lid on the coffin of our effort and throw shovelfuls of dirt onto our own dreams.
My mother had a tongue-in-cheek version of an old saying:
“If at first you don’t succeed, swallow all evidence that you tried.”
We laugh, but we do it.
Or perhaps we adopt an even darker proverb:
“If at first you don’t succeed, make sure no one else can either.”
We rewrite history. We downgrade the dream. We convince ourselves it wasn’t worth doing anyway. And just as the grass grows over the grave of our abandoned attempt, someone else—innocent, hopeful, unaware—comes along and accomplishes what we were aiming for.
As if it were no big deal.
And that is when something sharp pierces the heart.
We may never say it out loud. But a whisper rises: “They won’t succeed. They can’t. They shouldn’t.”
We need them to fail.
Not because of them—but because of us.
If they succeed, then our failure cannot be explained away as impossibility. If they prevail where we floundered, then the narrative we built to protect ourselves begins to crack. Their victory exposes our surrender. Their courage reopens our wound.
So instead of becoming disciples of hope, we become agents of skepticism. Instead of cheering the one in the arena, we analyze his form. Instead of watering the tall poppy, we measure it.
And isn’t that sad?
Isn’t it tragic that the human heart can be co-opted into defending the status quo of decay simply to avoid the discomfort of comparison?
But there is another path.
We can choose to see someone else’s success not as accusation, but as invitation. Not as threat, but as proof. If one garden can bloom in neglected soil, perhaps another can, too. If one wall can be rebuilt, perhaps ruin is not destiny. If one poppy can grow tall, perhaps the field was meant to flourish.
The critic who awakens only when progress appears must ask himself:
“Am I protecting excellence?
Or am I protecting my own resignation?”
The arena will always be lonely. The weeds will always be safer. And the tall poppy will always draw the blade.
Perhaps the greatest victory is not only in being the one in the arena.
Perhaps it is in becoming the kind of community that refuses to sharpen the blade when a poppy rises. The kind of culture that does not retreat into critique the moment hope appears—but leans forward and cheers when someone steps into the abandoned lot and begins to clear the weeds.
Maybe the deeper courage is this: to look at another person’s attempt and see not accusation, but possibility. To interpret their progress not as a threat to our past surrender, but as proof that surrender was never the only option.
We can choose to see through the eyes of hope—because we have not given up ourselves. Because we are still trying. Because we are humble enough to learn new ways of succeeding from someone else’s success.
We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. That is what so much of Scripture is doing—holding up story after story of men and women who stepped into what others avoided.
They stepped into deserts and found water.
They stepped into lion’s dens and slept.
They stepped into furnaces and walked with God.
They stepped into rejection, into chains, into crosses—
and walked free of tombs.
The pattern is unmistakable: restoration always looks fragile at first. Courage always looks exposed. Faith always looks unnecessary—until it works.
So if you find yourself near the arena, resist the easy reflex to measure, to cut, to protect your own history by predicting someone else’s failure.
Don’t cut down the tall poppy.
Don’t rationalize the return of decay.
Cheer.
Cheer when someone clears the weeds. Cheer when someone builds the wall. Cheer when someone risks the humiliation of trying. And if all you can contribute is encouragement, then give it without restraint—because encouragement is not a small thing. It is oxygen to restoration.
And who knows?
The day may come when you step back into the lot yourself.
And you will be grateful—deeply grateful—that someone chose to cheer instead of cut.