The Art Of The Game: When All That Matters Is Winning, Everyone Loses

I had not the most auspicious of beginnings. But there was no money in my budget to just build a wall. So I never wasted time thinking someone else was responsible or even a reason I could not find a job or get my shit together.

And my mother raised my baby brother Troy and me on a nursing assistant’s salary, alone. So I was never inclined to wallow in self-pity or burden others with incessant whining about the unfairness of life either.

“In this country, you can be anything you want. But you gotta do the work. So stop crying, before I give you something to cry about,” my ma would say, usually with something hard or leather in her hand, to hit you with.

If we had a problem, we had two options: Suck it up ~ Be better. Mom was all about free-will, per se. She was only just holding that belt to remind you all choices have consequence.

Gloria was of the ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’ generation. It took me years to realize that third choice, the box with all of the above next to it, was implied. She was not a woman to be trifled with.

So I did; sucked it up that is. And it worked. I got better, every time. She was right. It didn’t kill me.

Even when I lost my mom, to cancer.

I thought it would, for a long time. I thought, if I closed my eyes and held my breath long enough my heart would just stop. But at best I only passed out and always woke quite hungry which made me surprisingly fat in a shockingly short period of time.

I reminded myself instead of the forgotten third option and made my way back to the light.

So perhaps I have a greater appreciation for our country because I’ve thus far had such a remarkable life. America has always had its problems. But it remains the best country on the planet.

I guess I’m the only one who remembers when it used to be more about how you played the game, than whether or not you won. Things, like people, were different then. Unlike now, just showing up entitled with your hand out was not nearly good enough. Not everyone involved even got a trophy. And the big one pretty much just always went home with me.

Well, maybe not always ツ   

No one enjoys the taste of defeat. But that’s part of what being alive is. There’s no crying in baseball and there should be no whining in life. Only losers, liars, grifters & cowards steal & cheat. No one wins all the time. And there is no pride felt in winning, if doing so was done so through cheating. No, that feeling although oft mistaken for pride, will always, most distinctly only be shame.

Winning with honor because you are better, faster, stronger, more clever simply undeniably, the best, that pride you feel almost brightens your soul, has to be earned. There are no shortcuts to extraordinary or even just great.

That used to matter in this country. As Americans, it was the one thing we could all, without exception, agree on.