Winners and Losers

Well, we know which side of that coin we all want to be on after that flip, right?

My daughter plays lacrosse, both for her high school and on an advanced-skills club team. She used to tour the country competing as a gymnast. She knows about winning and losing. She’s seen her share of both last place and first. She’s seen her share of shady calls and unfair judges.

In other words, she knows how to digest winning and losing.

Me, her mother…who should know better…ruminates. There was a particularly unfair referee who was present at nearly every one of her high school lacrosse games last year who was fairly public about not liking her school. He’d ignore the other team’s jabs and jostles for almost every game, but my daughter’s team?

*whistleblow* *whistleblow* *whistleblow*

My daughter and her teammates had the grace of saints. Hell, her coach took it all in stride. Me? You could hear my mouth going wherever you were on the sidelines. Me, Zen Jenn the Meditator, was out for blood. And I definitely wanted that ref to know it was his blood I was out for. In a sorta passive-aggressive-middle-aged mom way to boot. Namaste.

Sigh. I’ve had proud moments but those times are not included.

Why do we do that? I mean, especially where our kids are concerned, but why in general?

Why can’t we understand we will win sometimes and lose sometimes period-end-of-sentence?

Why do we always insist on being the winner?

Sure, the caveman parts of our brains are tricked into thinking that losing at anything at any time equates to losing that neolithic struggle of life. Losing back then meant getting eaten by a Neander-wooly. Losing back then meant starving and freezing.

Yeah, I’m not totally sure that this primitive part of my brain was activated during my sideline escapades, but it sounds like a good excuse. I mean, my girls were the best and brightest. Why couldn’t the ref see that? They tested into a nearly impossible-to-get-in public school and juggle AP classes along with their sport which the opposing teams he was favoring probably definitely didn’t have to do. My girls should always win.

And there it is.

We always think we should win because we have an intimate relationship with the subject of the winning/losing odds. Ourselves. For me, I knew the girls on my kid’s team and their coach to be great and I had little to no skin in with the opposing teams.

Throw in a little bit of not-so-fair calls and citing my daughter for some stuff she probably definitely didn’t do?

Blood.

Unfairness in life is something we all handle differently. I handle it the worst. I want everything to be fair. I go to bat for fairness. I stand up. I testify.

Some of us, like my kid, can take it in stride. Unicorns. I don’t know how you all are capable of not talking shit when there’s some shit to discuss.

Winning, losing, fair, unfair. It’s all relative. It depends on which side you’re on. When we’re winning, every call is fair and every cell in our being radiates with grace.

Not so much when we’re losing.

In Zen there’s nothing that is fair or unfair. There is really no winning or losing. Everything just is. As a meditator, you’d think I’d absorb that fact and go with the flow.

I don’t. Practicing meditation or being a peaceful soul doesn’t mean we’ll always sit nicely on the sidelines of our lives. Thich Quang Duc, The Burning Monk, gave up his whole life to protest the persecution of the Buddhists in ’63. He’d fucking had it with those persecutors and their unfairness. So what’s the difference?

Where’s the line between talking some shit and letting it go?

Thich Quang Duc knew. He knew it was more favorable to reliquish his one life for the sake of all those Buddhists. He saw shit clearly.

My kid and her team knows. They know when something is worth standing up for and when their energy is better served elsewhere. My daughter certainly didn’t learn it from me. They see shit clearly.

I’ll tear that house down shingle by shingle.

And when we get off the playing field and into the game of Life it becomes more complicated. Winning and losing is a perceived thing. There’s a whole bunch of grey areas because you can win and lose at the same time.

As a meditator, I understand that what seems like a lose in the short run can actually be a win in the long run. Lost your job? In a little while another, better job can come along that would have been impossible to entertain taking if you were still stuck in that shit job. Can’t find your keys? When you go to search, you could also find the glasses you misplaced a week ago and see that you also want to straighten the dish of crap you usually keep your keys in by the front door and…ahhh. There they are and now your crap dish is nice and organized within that key-losing journey.

Winning and losing at life is blurred lines of self-imposed frustration and internal high-fives. Add in key players and extras who say and do shady stuff that makes them seem innocent leaving you playing the antagonist and the complicated is further complicated.

And what a lose is in your 20’s can be a win in your 40’s. As in you’re a loser if you go to bed at 9pm on a Friday night when you’re 24, but at 44? Score.

When we think about winning and losing/fairness and unfairness as adults, we need to keep in perspective The Big Picture. So we didn’t get that promotion but it frees us up to now seek more gainful enriching employment. Then watch gleefully as your promotion-deniers fall all over themselves begging for forgiveness-just-please-don’t-leave-here-is-a-giant-raise.

Yeah. I’ve got a problem and the problem is called My Competitive Spiteful Nature.

We can see things as winning or losing, fair and unfair. We can spend loads of energy calling out every naysayer, every nasty ref. Or we can see life for what it is. It just is. We ebb and we flow. We sink and we swim. We win and we lose.

An enlightened being is beyond all that stuff. It doesn’t matter, the winning and losing, who said or did what. Nothing is good or bad. Everything just is what it is. If they lose this round they might win the next. That ref was an unfair dick that time? He was probably just having a moment. For game after game.

I’m so far from enlightenment I can’t even see it with a telescope.

But this is Zen philosophy. You broke your phone? The phone is plastic and glass and wires and you’ll get another. You lost the game? It’s a GAME, and there will be others and you will eventually be on the other side of that. The whole point in Zen, concerning this topic, is to just let things play out how they play out and not internalize it whatsoever. I can reason that the ref has his reasons for making his calls and maybe next season he’ll simmer down on hating my kid’s school and he’s most likely a good parent himself.

Problem is, our Zen side is MIA a lot during the heat of the moment. During the struggle. Within the crisis.

We…me especially…need to grasp the notion of life being full of victory and defeat and it’s okay. Life is struggle. If it’s not we’re either dead or enlightened. Struggle comes with the territory of being human. Winning and losing. Fair and unfair. It’s all part of it. We’ve gotta understand that.

Me especially.