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Yes, We Do Need To Learn How To Lose
Why all winners are losers and how losers are the ones who can change the world
I admit it: I am naturally competitive. I know a fair number of people who aren’t and who always appear to be extremely happy, so far be it from me to suggest that being competitive is a virtue.
That said, we are raised to be competitive. We are told that life is a series of games that we should strive to win. The world is far too complex to reduce it to winning or losing, though. Most victories come at a price and most defeats are also opportunities. Competitiveness, however, likes the reductionism of result. Winners love the simplicity of results. Results are the winners’ gold standard.
One of the main problems with our win-or-lose worldview is that losing happens much more often. This causes dissonance, because we are taught to win when winning is nothing but fleeting bleeps in a constant sequence of losing. We do a lot more losing than winning, yet our culture waxes lyrical about the latter and locks the former in the basement of our consciousness. We don’t talk about defeat. Defeat is taboo.
Moreover, even when we win, we hardly know how to celebrate, because we may be brainwashed to run after victory as if our lives depended on it but nobody ever told us what to do…