This is the second in my series Intellectual Self Help. The first one defined my project. This one looks to raise our self worth by thinking about losing, winning, and judging. I’ve judged a lot of literary prizes, from the National Book Award in Nonfiction, to the Oregon Book Award, to many poetry books and individual poem awards. I’ve won a bunch of book prizes too. To do that, I first had to lose a lot.
Let me tell you the famous wisdom about prize judging as a panel of judges. Everyone tells their first choice and each is hotly vetoed by someone, so the judges all go down their lists of favorites until they get to one that everyone can live with. Notice that the book that wins is often nobody’s favorite.
That hasn’t been my experience entirely, always so far, for me, a superb book prevails, but some of the reasons books get shot down are quite inane. Look, it’s true enough to support not taking prizes too seriously.
And yet.
And yet, if you win, you may feel like the fated favorite, perhaps peacocking around the house and alienating your wife or maybe freaked out by the attention you start drinking too much champagne. If you lose, it may never be part of your thinking that your submission had more passionate celebratory defense than did the winner.
Now say Famous Poet X is judging a contest. With one judge you can be sure you have someone’s favorite of all the submissions. Except no. Often X is only sent a reasonable sized batch to choose from, after screeners have weeded out the untenable. I think we can trust them to get it right most of the time, a lot of sloppy nonsense gets sent in. And yet. If you don’t win, you don’t know for sure that ol’ X ever saw your work. It’s also true that X may be blind to what you are doing for reasons having nothing to do with quality - which is one of the drawbacks of a single judge.
When we get what we want we glow for a while or less, when we don’t get what we want we feel like hell, for a while or more. In capitalism and other competitions, a few win but there are many more people marooned in loss. The vast majority of those who tried lost, and many are marooned in the loss. Marooned marooned. Even the winner now has to find a way to win again.
The chief remedy is gratitude for what one has. You can even pretend you just won something you love — your car, your dog, your talent — or notice the relationships you wouldn’t trade for any win. You can also remember past victories, wins, or windfalls and how they didn’t always change one’s life. One can somehow stay marooned.
Another remedy for aching loss is to consider the downside to winning. There usually is one, if only that if you get the promotion, now you have to do the work. If you win anything you may have to spend a lot of time managing other people’s envy. You might not think it would happen to you, but I’ve read many a memoir piece where a literary prize led to a seizing up and inability to write for years. If you’ve been made into a boss, huzzah!, but you may have to accept that you’ve been cut from the herd, where your friends are.
I point all this out both to console the one who feels like he has bad luck, to show him that winning isn’t entirely great, and also to console the one who just won and wants to know why she feels like spit.
Also remember that people who succeed fail a lot, it just doesn’t show in the biographical note. Sure there are super lucky people, but much of the time winners win because they try more often and lose a lot. Don’t think those losses don’t suck. Celebrity winners, like, say, famous directors, may grow a thick skin for little rejections but their doomed moonshots will land them ruminating in their rooms. Winners lose with as much anguish as anyone.
Why do our feelings about ourselves change so violently based on the most recent thing that happened? Sports fans watch a game and in the end feel either damned or like a damsel newly undistressed. There was a Comedian in Cars episode where Seinfeld’s fancy car broke down and he flushed and deflated and wondered Why?, why does he feel great when the car is great, in any given “now,” and miserable in the moment the car breaks down. He hates it. For many of us, we’re the team, the car, and what happened to our dreams just now leaves us high or underground, crushed or elated.
I watch these hunger shows like Alone and Naked and Afraid, reality shows where people have to survive in outrageous natural conditions, finding food or starving. There the phenomenon of the most recent event seeming to decide everything is profound. Fishing without a catch means not just hunger but despair of ever catching anything again. Let there only be one fishing trip with a good catch and way before the fish is cooked the spirits of the survivalists seem to get a burst of protein. Confidence elates them off their heels. Now, because of the idle nibbling of one mid-size tilapia, the fisher is certain that she is a warrior and can win this thing.
It’s magical thinking. The most recent response to your work is not the truest. Anyway, we ought to be able to see that mostly, there’s no winning. The odds are too awful. The people who win big often say they had a tough ride anyway. Anyway losing is too common to be real defeat. Mostly, if you’ve got enough to eat, and you’re not on the gallows as a freethinker or a sinner, you’re one of history’s great winners.
I take judging more seriously than reasonable. It may seem like easy work and a delight, and it is fun to have such a loud voice, but I sweat steam over the choice, and am up nights.
Maybe the ache of wishing your home team had won, and your sports car had run, and that you were a contender rather than a bum, maybe it’s all the same evolutionary glitch. Because who cares? Fame and big success are a mess. The real rules for happiness are this: Make the people you love happy (listen when they talk). Have a nice dinner. Take a walk. Be alone sometimes. Sing. If you’re a maker, make things. Play. Figure out what you’re rich in, and give some away.
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The streetlight leaf shapes on my windows are bouncing with the breeze. I’ve put all of my plants outside to enjoy the hothouse summer, and they are thriving, but that means plant-solitude indoors. Times of abundance have their own scarcity. Stay safe and I shall return to encourage you again.
love,
Jennifer