Learning to Lose

Margo Price does a great C&W song entitled, ‘Learning to Lose’. In it she repeats the haunting question, ‘Is winning really learning to lose?’

Hopefully, for the benefit of introspection, consider something about you that is not perfect and just seems to linger around year after year. Perhaps a bad habit, etc.

Now, consider what you say – to yourself – about it. We don’t want to be wrong, we don’t want to lose, even to ourselves. So we rationalize and we become masters at that craft. We perfect our responses and repeat them over and over to ourselves and others.

And in some strange way we use these responses to convince ourselves that we have won another round. Only two things change; you reinforce the problem – and you make it through another day without having to do anything that may actually help your situation.

The critical distinction here is that no learning takes place. You are not learning how to lose, you have already perfected that. You are merely practicing repetition of something that is not pure in the first place. You don’t want to face the problem, so instead you fortify your status quo, assuring that no change for the better will ever have a chance of happening.

If this system of avoidance seems pertinent to you, maybe a trip to secluded mountains is in order. Perhaps there, in solitude, you may get a hint that ‘losing’ this round is the best thing that could occur. This type of ‘losing’ is the big, important kind. It is realizing that even the track you were running on was flawed. And the ‘prize’ you were after was at best – a deception, a lie.

This entire message could be entitled, ‘Not trying to win UGLY races’. ‘Learning to lose’ is an extremely valuable lesson in protecting an individual from personal detriment.

If you find yourself in any type of ugly race, lose! And if there might be more than one, learn to lose! Get on a track that is worthy of YOU! One where winning is beneficial.

You’ll be so happy you lost!