If I am honest and I think about it I have been defeated more times in life than I have experienced victory. When I found my identity on winning this was like a nightmare to me. I spent much of my time secretly plotting within me for ways to get the fix of winning.
I spent countless watts of energy chasing that elusive and conditional lover called success. Then one day something happened and I began to see with the eyes of my heart and understood that winning was just a space I travelled through like losing was. Yes the feelings were different but only because I was wrong about what I thought winning could give me but never did. Today I understand that I lost so that I could win. I won so that I could be ready to lose again and learn the wonderful lessons these spaces have always offered me though so often I missed them.
Life is not about winning and losing as much as it is about playing freely from our heart. When we focus on a particular result we divide ourselves and in the process minimize in our lives the flow of our God given talent. When we discover the thrill and rush that playing brings with it we begin to see that trying to win was nothing more than an attempt to feel in control of our lives and be noticed by others. I believe one of the reasons God takes us through a desert experience is to strip away this need to win and succeed at all costs. Here, if we remain still, we see that true happiness and peace are not at the end of a winning experience or in successfully avoiding defeat, but instead in noticing that in Him we have always been noticed and winners regardless of the results in our lives.
Standing up with your arms up accompanied by a big bad shout of victory in one of the biggest tennis stadiums in the world is a feeling that few ever experience and even fewer can understand what it means as the whole world watches on. Yet after many of these you realize that one victory only begs for another and that in time you are not free and successful but instead a prisoner to a never ending merry go around of merely chasing a fleeting feeling to keep you happy and at peace.
The reality is that we will never be happy and at peace or even truly excel at anything until we are able to see that winning and losing are but a pair of faint illusions which will never satisfy us like plain and simple playing in the moment can. The day we are able to suddenly shout from within and raise our arms in victory though there isn’t a result to celebrate nor anyone watching will be the day that we will be truly free, victorious , happy, and at peace!
Remember – We are most happy and in control when we don’t try so hard to have and keep them both.
-pablo-
Photo by Appalachian Afro
