“If you keep on believing, the dreams that you wish will come true.”
–from Cinderella (Charles Perrault, 1697)

Well, folks, it’s here: “March Madness.” The term was first used in the midwest to describe the craziness and excitement of high school state basketball tournament play. CBS borrowed it in the 1980s for the men’s college tournament and the name stuck–now probably as recognizable as The Kentucky Derby’s “The Fastest Two Minutes in Sports” and the Masters’s “A Tradition Unlike Any Other.”

Counting the four play-in games, sixty-eight college teams and their fans go into this week with the dream of cutting down the nets after the final game ends. But the true madness begins when the four sixteenth-seeded teams play the four number-one seeds. No chance of an upset, right? Tell that to the University of Maryland Baltimore County and Fairleigh Dickinson, who upset Virginia (2018) and Purdue (2023), respectively!

A cinderella team makes a run at a higher seed and fans both present and watching on television go wild. Except for the patrons of the higher-seeded team, everyone pulls for the underdog. And why not? We love to see the “little guy” succeed. No wonder it smacks of madness!

There was a man and his wife who boxed book orders in their garage. He then dutifully took them to the post office and mailed them to buyers. Anyone would pull for someone with that much initiative. Gradually, the business grew, and grew, and grew. Today, it’s the world’s commercial behemoth. That man and his business: Jeff Bezos and Amazon.

We pull for the underdog that’s never won a championship. And then, when they continue winning, we turn against them. Think the Yankees or the Cowboys, and, more recently, the Dodgers and the Chiefs. Their fans love the run, but the rest of us tire of it. But, give credit where credit is due.

The same goes for Bezos. I wonder how many people who loved his “only in America” success story now resent the Amazillions (my word) he and his company have earned?

Most of us will never start a business anything close to Amazon, or play on a college or professional team that wins a championship. But all of us have or will feel like the underdog. Times when we think no one’s pulling for us, or perhaps no one is even aware of what we’re going through.

It can be as frivolous as the high school kid asking the prettiest girl in the class for a date to as serious as fighting a cancer diagnosis when the prognosis is bad and the outlook is dim.

What defines us is not the business we fail to build, the trophy we never hoist, or the illness we don’t beat. Rather, it’s the battle we wage when the chips are down and the house money’s against us. Ben Sasse is a case in point.

Sasse is the former senator from Nebraska who left the Senate to assume the presidency of the University of Florida. He is known for his conservatism tempered by reason and intellect. He stepped down from the university presidency due to his wife’s health issues, and then last year he was diagnosed with Stage 4 metastatic pancreatic cancer. Barring a miracle response to treatment, that’s a death sentence . . . and he knows it.

But Sasse has chosen to fight his cancer publicly, and by doing so he’s demonstrating his courage, realistic determination, and faith. He continues to write and speak. Search his name. You’ll be inspired. Notwithstanding his stellar résumé, when he’s gone he’ll probably be best remembered for how he lived the end of his life.

We don’t choose all the circumstances of our lives, and often we have no control over the outcome. But we can choose to live with courage and dignity and faith.

Even when the slipper doesn’t fit.