On Winning

“An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.” -Gandhi

It has been a funny news weekend for winners and losers. William and Kate; winners. The folks of the storm ravaged south; losers. The demise of Osama bin Laden – not completely sure where that falls. Could go either way.

When I was younger, I thought of winning in terms of revenge. I thought that if I felt hurt by bullies (of the emotional kind), they won. On the flip side, if I grew up to be successful, that would be the best revenge against anyone who hurt me.

In being happy, confident, and successful, I would have won.

What a sad way to think–that it’s all one giant score card of them against us. That we’re in a competition to come out on top, and anyone who wronged us, intentionally or not, needs to lose for it to be OK.

Or, to talk about winning in terms of relationships – as in Kate Middleton “won” Prince William – sort of a project runway for Royals… (Harry seems to be the next prize – can hardly wait to see who wins him…)

It may feel good to imagine there’s a consequence for treating us thoughtlessly. Or unkindly. But in the end, isn’t it more helpful for us to reframe along the lines of knowing that what we really want isn’t for other people to suffer or have less than us, or to lose. Isn’t what we really want the ability and gift to make peace with the past so that we can know success and happiness that has nothing to do with the burden of keeping score?

Our culture is obsessed with winning.

At school we learn that we have to compete to get what we want. Many of us grow up internalizing this idea and subtly infusing it into our relationships, friendships, career, and even spiritual path. I vividly remember the pep rallies from High School and college where we would actually pray for victory over the other school or team. I remember the huge hand-painted signs, “Beat the Sharks”, or “Beat the Tigers”. I’ve come to believe it’s a strange lesson to teach kids. I wasn’t more than sixteen or so when I started to wonder about a god who somehow favored Notre Dame’s football team over Villenova, or Army football over Navy, or the Ducks over the Beavers (Oregon reference, sorry). I frankly can’t imagine a model of a God who cares about those things. Or a God who comes down on one side or the other of those kinds of issues. So, winning and losing – without worrying about winning or loosing – comes down to how well one plays. That seems more real to me. I can connect with that more comfortably.

How well do we play?

In my early days as a postulant monk, I remember being almost shocked when I began to see that in the quietude of my mind, in that harmless, benevolent peaceful environment, I was secretly measuring myself and others according to how “spiritual” we were. Another monk “smoked” and didn’t have the vast insight I had gained in years of working for churches as a musician… he didn’t understand the liturgy, he didn’t this and he didn’t that – I was constantly comparing myself to him (myself favorably, him not-so-much). Of course he lasted and I didn’t. Funny how that works.

And through that experience, and my subsequent period in the adjoining Seminary, I was trying to be the best. The most gracious. The holiest. The smartest. Even the most urbane – (none of my other seminary classmates drove a Mercedes or had a weekend apartment in one of the great mansions in Portland’s southwest Hills or friends with beach houses and mountain cabins) I was doing many things, some of them ridiculous in hindsight, to be seen as “better than.”

The flip-side of this was that I never felt good enough. Our fixation with winning, with upstaging or topping is an attempt to cover up this feeling of being somehow deficient.

A couple of years ago, I met an old friend, who asked me what I was doing these days. I replied, somewhat mischievously, “Enjoying being a bit of loser.”

His expression was telling. He looked confused. Then he looked sad for me. Then he asked, “You’re joking right?”

“Well, kind of…”

Obviously being a loser can mean all kinds of things, and most of them aren’t states to be desired! But I find it fun to explore this in a more integral spiritual context, where winning and losing are seen as just different sides of the same coin. They are equal and each just a matter of perspective.

Winning or losing can ultimately never satisfy; nor can they degrade one’s value.

So where does one find value?

That is the question I have found very useful to take into the heart in meditation, in daily life, and in relationships. In doing so, I come across a whole lot of forces, some of them quite strong, suggesting that my ultimate value lies in:

•                Approval. Check (Numero uno for me)

•                My bank balance. Check. (Definitely numero dos).

•                My wheels (seriously, how pathetic is that…but it’s real)

•                An idealized view of being a “spiritual person.” Check.

It’s the force in the heart that is disguised as “that which will make me happy,” but is actually “that which keeps me off balance.”

It is a subtle kind of problem—the insidious, weaselly kind, that just cuddles up to you and promises to give you a good time. And then you end up face down in “me” and “why I don’t measure up?”

So, coming back to a very simple place in my heart, I like to ask myself: Can I be OK with being a bit of a loser? Can I recognize that I’ll never snag the person of my dreams, or have the baddest Mercedes SL63 AMG, or the coolest Pearl District penthouse. Can I recognize that I’m really ok without any of those things, and that the greatest paradox is that by allowing myself permission to not have those things, I’m really winning at a whole different level.

And hey, don’t get me wrong, it would be totally cool to win the lottery or have one of my wealthy relatives realize just how much they love me (the lottery has a statistically higher probability) – and end up with the toys of my dreams. But I have to know, to really know, that that would just be stuff I have – not who I am. I know that intellectually, but am still wrestling with it in terms of “heart knowing”.

It’s kind of tongue-in-cheek, but it holds a clear mirror up to the part of the heart that’s always looking for the next thing, scheming about a future, and generating worlds of a nebulous “them” who are cheering me on, or muttering their disapproval. In other words, delusion! Allowing the heart to lose a little, let go a little, and not give a hoot a little can go a long way in releasing from these forces of worry, driven-ness, and self-aversion.

When we allow ourselves the space to be a bit of a loser, our life can open up in surprising ways. Releasing the pressure of pushing and driving opens up a space in the heart that is present, available, connected and sensitive.

We taste the richness of being alive. We feel our feet on the ground. We remember that we can trust in the truth that we are valuable just by being. We feel this value in presence every time we release from intentions projected outside ourselves in another person, in time, or in an ideal of “who I should be” or even “who I could be” with the critical eye that we are either not there, or not sufficiently on the path.

I doubt that the new Duchess of Cambridge, Princess Catherine, won Prince William by trying to hard…in fact, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t that way at all. I’m pretty sure that with all the devastation in the south people will discover an amazing relational attitude, and resiliency within themselves that might otherwise have gone un-noticed. Osama Bin Laden took his risks and was certainly intelligent enough to know they came with a price. So perhaps it wasn’t so much about winning or losing, as just being in the flow – and frankly, our giving in to this release, feels a whole lot, curiously enough – like winning.