Victory and Defeat: Flip Sides of the Same Coin
When victorious, it is easy to become cocky, overlooking the temporariness of any success, attributing our success solely to ourselves and our individual efforts, and failing to remember that success invites us to spread the benefits of our success to others who are less fortunate.
Similarly, when experiencing defeat, it is easy to give in to despair and the fatalistic but false view that what is now will be forever. Defeat, like victory, is a temporary state. Life never wavers from its inherent stages of conception, birth, maturation, decay, and death. New birth and novel growth always emerges from death and defeat.
Winning or Losing vs. Necessary Fluctuations in Relationships
I often hear individuals and couples describe the search for the magical “work-life balance” or some other ideal of balance in their relationship to one another. This is an illusion, in my view. Life equals change and to seek a magic status that is stable, unchanging, and permanent is to abandon the need to remain flexible, adaptable, and to seek needed course corrections in the face of what we encounter, sometimes on a daily basis.
What is true in healthy relationships is true in the larger world of communal, social, and national relationships. At certain times, one party or set of ideas will appear to “win” while the other is seemingly relegated to defeat. To me, such views are antithetical to healthy growth, and healthy growth heavily depends on maintaining an attitude of humility regardless of whether we are up or down at any point in time. Ultimately, our current position will shift. Ultimately, we will need to lean on the other. Ultimately, we are not engaged in efforts solely for our personal benefit but are always and forever engaged together in the effort to “make things better” for as many as possible, though our opinion about what “better” means may differ. Hence, the need for ongoing and open-minded conversations.
There is a story that hales from Eastern Europe that serves to remind us of the futility of becoming too attached to the view that we’ve won or lost, whether as individuals and couples or in larger domains. We always know less than we believe and can always learn more from each other. Here it is:
When someone is honestly 55% right, that’s very good and there’s no use wrangling. And if someone is 60% right, it’s wonderful, it’s great luck, and let him than God. But what’s to be said about 75% right? Wise people say this is suspicious. Well, and what about 100% right? Whoever says he’s 100% right is a fanatic, a thug, and the worst kind of rascal.
Found in Czeslaw Milosz’s The Captive Mind.
Despite our differences, it is important to remember and remain committed to the fact that we are all in this together.
David Alter, PhD maintains his psychotherapy practice in Minneapolis, MN. To reach him, visit www.drdavidalter.com.
