You’ll lose.
And lose and lose again.
Doesn’t matter where you are, you’re going to lose plenty.
Sometimes the only sign that you’ve gone up in the world is the fact that you’ve begun losing at bigger things. You’re now losing thousands, instead of hundreds. You’re losing someone you loved, who loved you back – someone you wouldn’t have had in your life if you hadn’t worked hard at impressing them in the first place.
You keep moving up the ladder, but at every point you feel the pain of losing. You’ve reached high to get to this point, but you’re always failing at something.
It hurts…sometimes bad enough to make you want to stop.
The world wants you to lose. People keep telling you “No”.
Your dreams are blocked by a persistent NO ENTRY sign that seems to jump in front of whatever path you feel like going down next. People snigger when you tell them how high you hope to climb.
You realise the only one who actually cares about your success (no matter what your mother says) is you.
No-one cares if you’re great. Hell, half your friends are just grateful if you’re not making them look bad. They’d prefer you comfortable. Your parents prefer you comfortable because then they don’t have to worry about you changing too much and leaving them.
The world is not set up for you to grab those “wins”.
But you bash at the door, and bash, and bash, and learn and learn, and improve, and improve, bash again, bash again, and finally you hear a little crack on that door. It’s starting to crumble.
You smile.
After a seemingly endless streak of losing, you just grabbed a single, precious win.
Beyond this door is the horizon you’ve waited for.
But soon you realise there are so many more landscapes to find, beyond bigger, much more intimidating doors.
And to get there…it’s gonna take a lot more losing. You’ll hear “No” again when you spot the next sunny vista you’d like to move to. That’s the way it goes.
But losing and moving forward is something to be treasured. It’s about as good as it gets.
Now you’ve had a few wins under your belt, you now know that the next door in front of you, even if it’s grander than anything you’ve kicked through before, can also yield to force.
You give it a charge.
Bash.
Nothing.
There’ll be a bit more losing before this one breaks.
But that’s ok.
You realise you’ve kind of started to fall in love with losing as much as winning.
After all, winning is just what happens at the moment you walk through the door. But losing is what made you tough enough to knock it down in the first place.
You realise the truth: Winning is just a staircase – one that leads you higher and higher to yet another losing circle.
But at least the view gets better every time.
Author: Stephen Hussey
Source: gettheguy.co.uk