Can you do something for me? It is hard to ask people to do things–especially hard for me because I spent so much of my life on the other end of that question. My mother didn’t quite ask me to do things. She told me to do them, or didn’t tell me and still expected them to be done. That is how I came around to asking.
Can you try not to win?
We all love being winners. Losing is terrible. Losing feels like people are going to laugh at you or at least look down on you. I’m a New York Giants fan, so I know what it means to be laughed at. I’m a black guy who looks African, so I know what it means to be looked down on–maybe even a little feared as well. I also know what it feels like to be a victim and what it feels like to think you’re a victim even when you’re not. All of these feelings live over there under that losing umbrella. Feeling it does something to you. It makes you stop listening to anything but the sound of your own future win.
I am not asking you to lose. I’m asking you to step back from the game for a minute. Corporations love that saying “Ten thousand foot view” like when you look down you can see all the moving pieces and get a better sense of how it all is put together. That’s true, but you’re also looking down in the sense of seeing yourself as larger than everything else. You’re also looking from far away in the sense of missing the nuance.
I just want you to take a step back, like Neo did in the Matrix. He had to get shot to do it, which I do not advise, but I propose a simpler solution. Just stop thinking that anyone else’s win has anything to do with your own. Read, think, and process for yourself. Just for a little while. I mean it really helps you see what is going on… Especially when it comes to politics.
I started reading articles in isolation. This is not an easy thing to accomplish. Everything you read is linked to something else. Publishers want to shove you down that rabbit hole. They don’t want you to go anywhere but where they are and listen only to what they are saying. I fought my way back up out of the dirt. I started picking pieces at random–but still on the subject–until a picture formed.
I’m not going to tell you what that picture is. We all need to be able to draw our own conclusions that are separate from the ones people attempt to draw for us. They may be the same in the end, but that means more if you get there on your own. No shortcuts. We take too many shortcuts already. It’s part of why this advertising and media landscape works so well. Too well maybe. Did I tell you about the time I saw a blog post about how you should only clean one room at a time? 11 million views. I mean, this wasn’t exactly revelatory… except it was to a lot of people. That’s what I mean about shortcuts. They short circuit our common sense.
So, here’s what I am really asking you to do. Take a second look. Don’t play the victim. Don’t jump to that ‘I’m on his side, so he’s certainly right’ state. Don’t go the other way either. Look with an open mind and heart. Think about what you care about personally. Think about the kind of world you’re trying to live in. Think about the kind of world you want to leave behind for the people you love and the people who love them. Self-love, even selfishness is important, but loving the other is important too.
I won’t tell you to do any of this–I couldn’t if I wanted to and it is the entire point for you to step back and get there on your own. Then it doesn’t feel like losing. Maybe it feels like waking up.
Sorry. That’s a little too close to the ‘woke’ button. That word triggers a lot of people. I should have said it feels like, well, like when you’re on an airplane and that roar you heard when you first climbed in and took your seat starts to feel like it isn’t even there anymore. Then something happens. For me it’s a bit of a painful moment. The pressure builds up and I can hear less and less, all of it fading into the sound of that pressure buildup. I can feel myself reacting to it, angry and wanting anything to make it go away and then, pop! It’s gone. You can hear the rest of the world again. Yeah, it’s a little bit like that.