The Optional Agony of Defeat

quote from
The Woman Who Fell to Earth: To Fail Is Divine
by Martha Beck
http://www.oprah.com/spiritself/omag/
ss_omag_200712_mbeck.jhtml

My dog-groomer friend Laura breeds and shows prizewinning poodles. One afternoon she arrived at the off-leash dog park looking thoroughly dejected.

"What's wrong?" I asked her as our pets gamboled about.

"Ewok," said Laura, nodding mournfully toward her well-coiffed dog. "He didn't even place at the show yesterday. Didn't…even…place! And he just hates to lose!" Her voice was so bitter I winced. "He should have been best in show," she said. "Look at
him—he's perfect!"

I looked at Ewok. He looked fine—but perfect? Who knew? To me, saying a poodle with long legs is better than one with short legs seems absurd. A poodle's a poodle, for heaven's sake.

I think Ewok would've agreed. He certainly didn't seem to be the one who hated losing. He'd discovered a broken Frisbee, and appeared to be experiencing the sort of rapture Saint Teresa felt when visited by God. Laura's desolation stemmed not from what actually happened at the dog show but from her ideas about success and failure. Lacking such concepts, Ewok was simply enjoying life. Going to dog shows and winning, going to dog shows and losing, going to the park and scavenging—from Ewok's perspective it was all good. Meanwhile, Laura's thoughts about losing had tainted all these experiences.

Thankfully, she'd managed to avoid a pitfall even worse than failure: success. "Success is as dangerous as failure," said Lao-tzu, and any life coach knows this is true. I can't count the number of times people have told me, "I hate the job I'm doing, but I'm good at it. To do what I want, I'd have to start at zero and I might fail."

Dwelling on failure can make us miserable, but dwelling on success can turn us into galley slaves, bound to our wretched benches solely by the thought, I hate this, but at least I'm good at it. This is especially ironic because researchers report that satisfaction thrives on challenge. Think about it: A computer game you can always win is boring; one you can win sometimes, and with considerable effort, is fun.