Winner

You don’t always have to win.

In fact, unless you sometimes lose, the very concept of winning no longer makes any sense.

For every thrilling victory, there needs to be a heartbreaking defeat; one of the most valuable contributions we can make to the fullness of human experience is to suffer such misfortunes.  Our own crushing loss enables another’s joyous win.

(As every fan of the 2014 Seattle Seahawks or 1992 Pittsburgh Pirates knows.)

People are too focused on being number one.  Being number two is pretty great and you don’t have to put up with so many press conferences and photo shoots.  For that matter, anywhere in the top ten is admirable and honestly, with on the order of 9 billion humans in the world, you can count yourself a great success if you’re anywhere in the top 100 million or so.

Besides, winning isn’t everything.  There’s also good sportsmanship, participating with integrity, and seeing others fail, as well.

The disappointment a small-market baseball fan might feel when their hometown team loses in the playoffs is surely tempered by the satisfaction of seeing the New York Yankees not even make the post-season.  That can lift a person’s spirits all through the hot stove days.

This obsession with winning is probably exacerbated by the contemporary political systems, which yields only one victor in each election.  Maybe an alternative, therefore, would be to have the term of service be based on a percentage of the vote.  So, for instance a Presidential candidate who received, let’s say, 54% of the popular vote would occupy the Oval Office for that amount of time, whereas the other finishers would fill in the remaining 46%.  This could be done on a weekly or even daily basis.  It sure would make for far more interesting and engaging press conferences at the very least.

Alternately, let’s just abandon the value of winning altogether; if the winner is a loser, then all the losers win!