Love has a million disguises
“Citizens” by John Guerra
But winning is simply not one
When I was a kid and even well into adolescence, I played with my siblings a game we called Good Guys and Bad Guys. It involved two teams, usually self-selected. The Bad Guys would do something nefarious—kidnap, steal, or kill—and the Good Guys would pursue them until they caught or killed them. The plots were often loosely based on television shows or movies we had seen. Sometimes we had plastic pellet guns, but often we just used sticks or fingers to shoot at one another. When shot at, you could usually protest that you had been missed or merely winged,1 but such a protest would only work two or three times. After that, the shooter would say, “Huh-uh! I got you that time,” and other players might be called upon to adjudicate.
You would think that such a game would have clear winners and losers, but in fact it hardly ever did. We didn’t play to win; the play was an end in itself. Sure, the Good Guys almost always got the Bad Guys, but there was no recognition of a win, no reward, no prize. If we continued playing, we would just pick our side again and start over. The Bad Guys were expected to be devious and cunning, and the Good Guys were expected to be persistent and honest. Occasionally the play would degenerate into the kind of altercation kids excel at—repeated shouts of “Did not,” and “Did too!” until an adult would break it up, and we would do something else for a while.
Despite having no winners and losers, the game was still competitive, but the competition was a contest of imaginations. Who could devise the most elaborate heist? Who could trick the Bad Guys into walking into a trap? We often measured our success not by how we fared against a brother or sister but by how our performance compared to the last time we had played. We might spend a few moments recapping the play and expressing admiration for some especially good plot twist. Then it was on to the next game.
One of the things I learned in school was to care about winning. Sports, playground activities, and even academic achievement were all organized with clear winners and losers. Winning was always rewarded; losing was often punished. Winning became a way to compare myself with my peers. I was not very athletic, but my reading comprehension and grasp of abstract concepts was very good, so I got excellent grades.
One of the things winning does is makes adversaries of peers. My earliest memories of my older sister involve cooperative play. But when I learned to play chess in sixth grade, I challenged her to a game, and she beat me. I wanted to play again. She beat me again. I kept wanting to play so I could beat her, but she refused. I think she could see where our relationship might be headed and did not want it to become adversarial. We went back to cooperative, more imaginative play.
Winning also encourages a class division of the world into winners and losers. Some take this division to great lengths. I’ve heard, and you probably have to, that second place is first loser. Such an attitude devalues all the hard work that other placing competitors have brought to a contest. But even worse, it ignores the element of chance. In the Olympics, for example, events are often decided by hundredths of a second. Of course, athletes and their coaches work very hard to eliminate chance from their efforts through rigorous training and discipline, but still, when the margin for error is so small, seemingly insignificant occurrences like a gust of wind or a cloud occluding the sun can have just enough impact to change the outcome of a contest. The difference between winner and loser comes down to randomness instead of a difference in effort. As Solomon wrote hundreds of year ago:
I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.
Ecclesiastes 9:11 NIV
Dividing the world into winners and losers also shapes and exposes our own values. No one wins at everything. As the saying goes, “you win some; you lose some.” Whatever you tend to win at becomes more valued for you. When I was in school, for example, I cared nothing for sports because I was not good at sports. I ignored the value of sports and looked down on boys who were good at them, unless they also happened to excel at academic subjects.2 In the same way, wealthy people tend to prize the ability to amass wealth even though doing so often harms others. They look down on the poor, thinking they lack drive or initiative, when what they lack is greed and cruelty. Because others show them deference for their wealth, they come to think of themselves as deserving it. But James warns against that kind of thinking.
My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong?
James 2:1-7
My first daughter is naturally cheerful and gregarious and has been from infancy. She laughs easily and doesn’t take herself too seriously. She is highly empathic, but she also has a competitive side. This combination has led her to avoid most competitive games. Why? Because she always feels bad for the losers. She prefers games that are designed to provoke laughter and camaraderie. If she were less competitive, she could just lose, but when she plays, she plays to win and then regrets playing because others lost. So now she avoids competitive games.
I’ve come to see her point of view. I still enjoy competitive games, but that might be because I lack empathy. I know that losing a game is painful, but it’s a temporary pain that most people can manage without descending into depression and self-loathing. After all, there’s always the next game. I think competitive games are fine in part because they are games. They have boundaries and rules and are detached from daily life. Those who come to regard life itself as a competition, however, risk losing all empathy for others. They start to live in an unbounded game where rules are for suckers and winning is the only thing. There are many such people in the world, often in positions of power and influence. They win so often on their own terms that they have no idea how much they lose.