Are You a Winner or a Loser? Really?
South Africa is celebrating winning the Rugby World Cup. WE won! Well not exactly all 57 million citizens hoisted the trophy. Only the 15 men who were actually on the field did that — but it is OUR victory none-the-less.
Winning the rugby final on the world stage has bonded our country and boosted our image of ourselves. WE didn’t have to physically play the game. Our flag waving, hoarse shouting, tense nail biting, emotional anthem singing and belief in the guys represented our country gave us the communal sense that we participated and jointly own this great and significant win.
To also acknowledge, a lot less publicized but every bit as meaningful and proud achievement for our country, the South African women’s netball team winning of the Africa Cup in October.
There is something glorious about the feeling of winning. It is a moment of exhilaration, pride and joy, tinged with a bit of relief that we made it. We feel sorry for the losing side, because we know how crushing defeat can feel, how disappointing it is to put everything of yourself on the line and not achieve the goal. As the winners, we have the luxury of sympathizing with the losers because we are glad it’s not us!
Like many parents trying to help their children navigate the pain of losing and the temptation to gloat in the euphoria of winning, I would often say to my daughters the cliché, “It’s not about winning or losing, it’s how you play the game.” I realized how hollow this sounded when my ten year old daughter asked very seriously from her seat in the back of the car one day, “Mom, if sport is all about how you play the game, how come it feels so good when you win, and everyone is so happy when you do?”
Winning does feel amazing and we want to win and be on the side of winners. But ask any professional sportsperson and they will tell you that their success is founded on multiple losses.
Even if we take the conversation off the sports field, my performing artist daughter and I visited the William Kentridge exhibition at the Zietz Museum of Contemporary Art in Cape Town. There Kentridge is quoted as saying, “After having failed as an engineer, revolutionary, painter, as an actor, and as a filmmaker, I was reduced to being an artist.”
This “reduction” has led Kentridge to international renown, winning multiple awards and having permanent exhibitions at such esteemed galleries as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate in London, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.
The danger of the dichotomy between winning and losing is that we create categories. We classify people into winners and losers as if these are identifying characteristics that place you in one group or the other.
The truth is we are all born winners. This is not a soft-peddling statement to make you feel better about yourself — although I hope it does give a boost to your self image! In fact, you are a winner by the very fact that you were conceived and born as you. The one little sperm that swum valiantly and vigorously towards the egg, along with the billions of others, won the race! You are the winning proof.
So we start life as winners but life can knock that winning feel out of us. We can be told or experience in a multitude of ways that we’re not measuring up in whatever sphere “someone” or “society” has decided they are the judge. We want to have a sense of our own validating success that proclaims in one way or another that we have won. We want to know we have achieved something of value, but we begin to suspect that we consistently end up on the losing side of life.
So I come back to the fact that “winners” tell us over and over about the times they have lost and failed. What therefore makes them winners is that these losses don’t define them. Perhaps even their winning doesn’t. Because if it did it would mean they are done, that something was over and completed. Instead the people who keep winning and achieving and growing are those who keep striving. They keep pushing boundaries and continue to look for new ways of staying on the cutting edge of what they want to get out of life.
So life is about how you play the game. It is also about how you take your losses, setbacks and disappointments. It’s not allowing them to define you, no matter how tough they are. It’s learning to lose graciously and then pick yourself up to get back out on the field, on the horse, on the stage, into the office.
And when the sweet victories come let’s celebrate with all the car hooting, wild whooping and partying we can muster, because after all WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS!

