On Losing

“Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs forever finally comes to realise that nothing really belongs to them.”

Paulo Coelho

We are a culture obsessed with winning. 

Business, sports, politics – it’s winner takes all. There is something satisfying about defining clear winners and losers.

So when Donald Trump uttered the words “Winning is easy, Losing is never easy,” just before the 2020 presidential election, he tapped into a truth that we can all understand.

Losing is never easy.

What if the problem is not losing? What if it’s about how we’ve framed winning and losing?

We’ve been taught by our culture to believe that in order to win, the “other side” has to lose. We’ve been taught that being fiercely competitive is the only way to survive and succeed in a hostile world. And we’ve been taught to believe that winning is all that counts.

Winning is worth pursuing at all costs, we’re told implicitly. This alone has wreaked havoc on our society.

But in the spiritual realm in order to win, we need to turn our expectations of what it means to win and lose upside down.

In other words, we must learn to accept losing.

Life is a series of partings

We hate being on the losing end of business deals, ball games, and political elections. 

There’s only one thing we hate more—the loss of our physical, emotional, and spiritual sense of freedom and independence.

When I was 19 or 20 years old I heard a sermon where the priest said, “Life is a series of partings.” 

Over 20 years later, that sentence has never left me. Though I may have been too young at the time to fully understand the power of that statement, subconsciously, I understood.

The journey of life requires us to continually let go of what we deem necessary for our safety and survival. Unlike the loss that comes with participating in contests, these losses are inevitable.

Life is a series of losses

The statement “Life is a series of partings” could be rephrased as “Life is a series of losses.” The first loss happens when we lose the comfort of our mother’s womb.

It’s amazing that even long after we’ve exited the womb, we instinctively revert to the fetal position for comfort or as a way of shielding ourselves from danger.

In my work with the dying, I’ve observed some patients slowly revert to the fetal position in their final days. Exiting the womb is a profound loss we all suffer as we enter the outside world against our will.

As we grow physically and intellectually, it’s easy to think that we’re just gaining. But it’s offset by more subtle losses. As we’re educated and socialized to fit the needs and preferences of our society, most of us slowly lose our child-like instincts of awe, wonder, and curiosity. This too is a profound loss.

As we grow to adulthood, we begin to suffer some of the more obvious losses – loss of health, wealth, and relationships.

And as we grow older, we lose our ability to manage our day-to-day lives—to drive, to walk, to eat, to stay awake, and ultimately to stay alive.

When it comes to the losses that come with living, there’s no red team or blue team, no Yankees or Mets. There is just you and me. 

We’re all losers.

Losing for something bigger

To compensate for life’s losses, we often try to gain pleasure for ourselves by winning as much success as we can before we’re forced to give it all up. We can become rigid, controlling, even tyrannical as we try to delay the inevitable out of fear.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Yes, our losses can feel pointless, or for the more religious-minded be seen as punishment. But it can also be seen as redemptive—that is, participating in some greater good that we may not perceive at present, or ever in our lifetimes.

This requires a huge leap of faith, one that many are unwilling to take. At the same time, it’s a sensible way to deal with the reality of loss. 

So the question should not be whether you will win or lose but this: What will your losses be for the sake of? The gospel? Your children? Money? Your principles? Your country?

The great paradox of the spiritual life is that when we surrender our losses to something larger, we will end up finding the very thing we thought we’d lost—like sticking your hand through some kind of cosmic wormhole only to find it reappearing at your other side.

It’s what Jesus meant when he said in Matthew 16:25: “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”