"Win at what you do" is one of those rah-rah go-getter mindset phrasing that has infected the Western world. Do you "win" at being happy? Having fulfilling relationships? Is everything a game/competition, to be measured with winning and losing?
Sometimes, when the conditions are just right and my legs are in good shape and my mind is in the right place, I have one of those amazing ski runs that is just perfection. And it’s great.
But other times, I also have fun. And I don’t end up with a score telling me how I did on each turn or anything like that.
I log most of my trips on Strava, mostly as a way to stay in touch with friends around the world, but intentionally avoid the run-counting and speed-tracking gizmos, to help preserve this “did I enjoy myself or not?” metric.
Relatedly, I’ve intentionally slowed down when skiing on lift access. The ride down is more fun than the ride up, ans the lift is a fixed cost. So I get a better ratio of enjoyment by turning more, and thus sitting on the lift less.
I choose to play fighting games, and I get my current fix from Dark Souls - an asymmetric fighting game. I enjoy winning, and I structure my play around intentional practice so that I can improve.
But I don't want to win. This is an important nuance.
Do you know what winning means? It means the game is over. It means there's no more challenge, no more adversary. It means boredom and purposelessness.
Rather than winning, what I want is to fight. Focusing on the outcome of the fight is missing the forest for the trees - the fun is in the conflict, in the struggle with your opponent(s), in the instinctive collaboration with your occassional teammate.
In the glory of the defeat, as well as victory. Unless you've got firsthand experience of this, you won't believe how wonderful it feels to get your ass handed to you by a truly superior player.
To put the gaming analogy aside, life will always have its ups and downs. Life will always take you somewhere unexpected. Fixating on outcomes will blind you to opportunities and invite needless suffering into your life.
>doesn't everyone want to win the game they choose to play?
This seems totally backwards. Winning is fun, but you don't choose a game because you like winning it, you choose it because you like playing it. All games can be won, but they all play differently.
> Let me rephrase: doesn't everyone want to win the game they choose to play? If you don't then maybe you picked the wrong game. If you choose to strive for a fulfilling relationship, and you succeed in achieving that then yes, you've won.
I find the combination of talking about "winning" and "game" in a sense of "having relationships" completely forced and odd. Those two really dont mix well. In the context of personal relationship, association with game and winning is typically related to toxic relationships.
No, not really. I don't do all the things that I do to win, I do it because I actually like them. I like to build things, I don't care if its the best. I like to play basketball, I don't care if I win, we rarely keep score. I know people that always want to win or have the best or be the best at something, it frequently makes them intolerable to be around for others that don't share their passion.
I think I recall a comment from Art Spiegelman about his father who was a Holocaust survivor - something to the effect of, if surviving was winning, did that mean dying was losing?
Another case in point is Bruno Bettelheim - if you read his Wikipedia page, does he come off as a winner or a loser? He seemed very accomplished at one point in time. The article seems to indicate peoples' views of him changed after his death - that he was basically a fraud and an abuser, and did even more harm through the influence of his psychological theories.
Losers sit in patent offices dreaming of the theories that gets rovers to mars, or the universal model of computation that allowed computers to exist. People told they must be Bigly Winners become reality-star presidents and certainly set an example.
Thinking a desire to win is necessary to exert effort is intriguing.
ZephyrBlu|4 years ago
If you choose to strive for a fulfilling relationship, and you succeed in achieving that then yes, you've won.
I only use the analogy of life as a game because it resonates with me. There are other ways to phrase what I'm saying.
pcl|4 years ago
Sometimes, when the conditions are just right and my legs are in good shape and my mind is in the right place, I have one of those amazing ski runs that is just perfection. And it’s great.
But other times, I also have fun. And I don’t end up with a score telling me how I did on each turn or anything like that.
I log most of my trips on Strava, mostly as a way to stay in touch with friends around the world, but intentionally avoid the run-counting and speed-tracking gizmos, to help preserve this “did I enjoy myself or not?” metric.
Relatedly, I’ve intentionally slowed down when skiing on lift access. The ride down is more fun than the ride up, ans the lift is a fixed cost. So I get a better ratio of enjoyment by turning more, and thus sitting on the lift less.
stavros_|4 years ago
But I don't want to win. This is an important nuance.
Do you know what winning means? It means the game is over. It means there's no more challenge, no more adversary. It means boredom and purposelessness.
Rather than winning, what I want is to fight. Focusing on the outcome of the fight is missing the forest for the trees - the fun is in the conflict, in the struggle with your opponent(s), in the instinctive collaboration with your occassional teammate.
In the glory of the defeat, as well as victory. Unless you've got firsthand experience of this, you won't believe how wonderful it feels to get your ass handed to you by a truly superior player.
To put the gaming analogy aside, life will always have its ups and downs. Life will always take you somewhere unexpected. Fixating on outcomes will blind you to opportunities and invite needless suffering into your life.
solipsism|4 years ago
Yes, indeed everyone wants to achieve their goals. That's vacuous and tautological, and no one was talking about that.
jolux|4 years ago
This seems totally backwards. Winning is fun, but you don't choose a game because you like winning it, you choose it because you like playing it. All games can be won, but they all play differently.
watwut|4 years ago
I find the combination of talking about "winning" and "game" in a sense of "having relationships" completely forced and odd. Those two really dont mix well. In the context of personal relationship, association with game and winning is typically related to toxic relationships.
hattmall|4 years ago
perl4ever|4 years ago
Another case in point is Bruno Bettelheim - if you read his Wikipedia page, does he come off as a winner or a loser? He seemed very accomplished at one point in time. The article seems to indicate peoples' views of him changed after his death - that he was basically a fraud and an abuser, and did even more harm through the influence of his psychological theories.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Bettelheim
AlexTWithBeard|4 years ago
And for what it's worth, having a fulfilling relationship takes a bit of an effort too.
minblaster|4 years ago
Thinking a desire to win is necessary to exert effort is intriguing.