The world basically divides people into two groups – winners and losers. Anything you do, you are judged in the end either to be a winner or a loser. You end up either winning or losing.
What got me writing this article is thinking about the difference in the meaning of winning and losing growing up (during my school days) and the meaning of it now (observing the real world). I'd like to share my thoughts with you, the reader.
Growing up, at school, winning was all about being number 1. Either you were number 1 and special or you were like the rest – think of it as number 1 being the shepherd and the rest being the sheep.
As a very young kid, I and other “bright” kids used to get those small colored stars for doing something right and that made us feel special (snobbish). I remember rubbing it into the other kids teasing them with a “hey, I got a star, did you get one?,” knowing perfectly well they hadn't. They'd try screaming something back but I was just too high off colored stars to get gloomy.
As I got older things slowly but steadily began to change for me. Few of those kids that got stars in their younger years continued to do so as they got older. I on the other hand slipped down into the abyss filled with kids with disgraceful marks. I drifted way way down and from A+s and A-s I was getting Ds, Es and sometimes Fs at tests. Slowly but steadily I was being pushed back to the other group, the not so bright group, and I got hints from teachers that I was a loser of some sort, a nobody, a not so bright child.
High school got things more messed up. It was soon boards time (9th,10th,11th,12th) and each year everyone was gunning to be that kid that beat everyone else. There now wasn't a group of winners, there was just one winner – the number 1 student. Everyone else were losers so to speak right from number 2 to number 20,002. No one actually cared if you came second or third or fourth or fifth because, simply put, you were not number 1. Often I got those 2nd rank and 3rd rank kids saying to me, rather rudely and sometimes subtly, “I beat you chump,” but that didn't anger me for I used to just tell them “whatever, you ain't the best so we're in the same boat.” That angered them even more. It all seemed like a rat race – a race wherein 99.999whatever% of us were doomed to lose and just one person was going to win it all.
The scene at sports was the same (at least considered the same way). The number 1 guy got that big trophy, while number 2 and 3 got those medals that looked like a $1 gift compared to the number 1's $1000 trophy, and not to forget the rest of the pack that got some sort of recognition, which never was quite comparable to the number 1's prize.
I was never quite the number 1 at anything growing up (except maybe dreaming). Every teacher kept telling me and kids like me that we were destined to grow up as failures and be nothing other than cheap laborers or worse unemployed, poor and unhappy beings. Being told that didn't feel good at all. However, I always felt there was something wrong somewhere with such a concept of winning and losing, but I didn't have the slightest clue of it. I and kids like myself had hope, but then along with such hope came a disturbing thought of not being a winner. What made it worse was that our track records were just confirming our greatest fear – the fear of being nothing but a loser.
Next came college and an understanding of the real world (which came through reading books and observing random people during my “lazy” hours). I soon found that “something wrong” in the concept of winning and losing taught to me in my younger years. I soon realized that winning and losing are relative. This changed everything. I felt like I had just woke up from comma. I felt old (physically, age wise) but that the same time I felt new (mentally, since everything had some how now changed). The world now was a whole new place with new meaning. What was best is that after coming to know that winning and losing are relative, hope was restored. Let me explain.
As said before, growing up I was told that you either are number 1 and destined to be something great, or you were going to end up a loser, a nobody that was destined at maximum to be ordinary. However, with the realization that winning and losing are relative in nature, I could be number 2 or 3, hell I could be number 2003 at something, yet be influential and successful. I took examples from the world's best and that gave me hope. For example, Bill Gates may own Microsoft and have 95 % of the operating system market but no one thinks one less bit of Steve Jobs. Yes, you can argue that Bill Gates is number one, having a bigger company, but does it really matter, for both of them are very highly respected, influential and successful. Take another example, even though Michael Jordon's got 6 rings, you still wouldn't find Karl Malone all in the dumps. He's still got respect and admiration, maybe not at Jordon's level, but then no one thinks of him as a loser. He's far far from it.
What's most important is that these not number 1s, yet successful (in their respective fields) people, think of themselves very highly (which is most important). They understand that yes, they're not number 1 yet, but what they do know is that they all are winners. And that's what I mean when I say winning and losing is relative. And it is this that gives us all hope. Hope as in, yes you may not be the best at something, yet you can be successful at it. And that's great news especially knowing that there can be only one best.
In the end, winning and losing comes down to trying your best with dedication. My teachers were right in some way when they said I wasn't going to be number one (at academics or sports) for I simply did not care much about being a winner (at that time). All I cared about was just doing okay, getting by and that was what “losers” do – settle for okay, or mediocrity. Winners keep trying to improve and innovate. Winners keep trying to outperform their competition. They may not always be number 1, however, they always try to give the number 1 a run for their money.
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