Wouldn’t it be lovely if you got everything you wanted out of this life? Wouldn’t it be grand if you got everything and had no problems? Wouldn’t it be wonderful?
No! It wouldn’t.
Just imagine you had so much money you’d never have to work again. What would you do? How many holidays could you go on one after the other until you got sick of living out of a suitcase?
If you had a massive house and plenty of land, would you want the aggravation of cleaning it all the time, and keeping the grounds in a fit state? No? Then you’d need staff. Then you’d have the problem of sorting them out all the time. On top of that, privacy would go out of the window and you’d have cleaners inside, getting in your way, you’d be interrupted by people asking questions about what you want doing.
And if you’ve got plenty of money, you’d need professionals to help you make the most of it and accountants to help sort your finances, unless you want to spend your time doing that.
Here’s the truth – even if you had it all, you’d still have problems. Just different ones.
No-one has a simple ride. Check out the celebrities who are followed around by paparazzi everywhere they go. Do you reckon they get sick of that?
How about all these rich sportsmen, whose homes get robbed when the criminals know that they’re not going to be at home?
Or the superstars who, when out in their lovely cars, get car-jacked? I remember the two footballers who were attacked by a gang who wanted to steal the car. I remember Michael McIntyre the comedian, getting held-up and having his expensive watch stolen from his wrist.
Yes, they get problems. Like I said, just different ones.
I suppose here’s the point I’m trying to make.
We all have problems, we all have losses. That’s just part of life.
Personally, I wouldn’t want to swap my problems and losses for anyone else’s. I’m not ready for any of theirs. I can barely sort out my own.
And that’s the thing I suppose. The losses and problems (or as I prefer to call them, situations) usually are either things we can fix fairly easily, or they’re ones that can stretch us and take us out of our comfort zones.
And I’ve found that at those times in my life, it’s the overcoming of the situations and losses that gave me the greatest satisfaction.
Years ago, a mentor of mine, Bill O’Brien said something that has always stayed with me.
“Iron doesn’t become steel until it’s been through the fire, and it’s the struggles that will make you strong.” How true is that?
When things are going along swimmingly, it’s lovely, but I’ve never learned anything of use to me in those times. Don’t get me wrong, it's lovely when it happens, but even when things going just fine, it can become a bit boring. Not that I’ve ever had too long a burst of success to get too bored.
I find that any success I’ve ever had has brought along with it, it’s own set of problems that have needed to be solved.
Don’t take what I'm saying the wrong way. I’m not putting forward the idea that we shouldn’t want the best we can get. I’m always looking to move on.
What I’m saying is that we should look at all our problems in a different way. Like you, I cuss and I moan when things go wrong and I personally have had many things that have been drastic enough to feel sorry for myself over.
Indeed, there’s been a few times when I’ve had a pity party with myself and laid the blame on others. And at the time, it has been down to others.
On one occasion, I did that for over five years, blaming someone else for my situation. And that may have been correct when it happened. But after a few days, I needed to grow up and take charge of the situation.
Because in playing the victim for all that time, I thought I was fighting my way forward, but I wasn’t. I was absolving my own responsibility for my future and doing nothing about it.
I remember, to this day when that lightbulb moment happened, when I realised I was acting like a child. It was then that I perceived that whilst my situation had been caused by someone else, my thinking had been holding me back, eating away at me, sucking the life out of me.
I recall thinking that I was sick and tired of it. Sick of blaming the person every day (especially since the person I was moaning about, probably slept well every night). The only people I was hurting was me and my family.
From that day on, I lifted my chin from the ground got going again, and started to face my challenges head-on, sorting them one by one.
My self-esteem went up each time I had a little win, and that held me in good stead for the next problem.
And those problems kept on coming. And one by one, as they were conquered, another one would come, each stretching me a little more.
But I’m here to tell you that those problems, challenges and losses are what have helped me grow. They’ve made me a stronger, more well-rounded, and a more capable man than I was.
It’s the challenges in life that you overcome that make it interesting.
Yes, I’d like to have plenty of money. Yes, I’d like to drive a better car. Yes, I’d like to live in a nicer home. And yes, I’d like to have more holidays.
And all of them would bring their challenges along the way. Some I’d win, some I’d lose. Because that's how life goes.
I want to leave you with a little story.
******
I was sitting at a bar in Bill's Gamblin' Hall in Las Vegas being plied
with free tequila by a chirpy barmaid in return for losing inordinate amounts
of money on a poker machine set into the bar top.
Free drink as long as your gambling is the deal. It's a deal I like because I always feel that one day, maybe this day, I'll luck out on the machine, will win money and end up toasted for free.
A fella sits down next to me. If a crumpled pack of Marlboro could talk, he'd have talked like this guy. A voice carved out of black oak, tar and Jack.
"Hey. You winnin'?" he says, as he pulls on a cigarette through squinting eyes. He's about 50 with a face that hadn't just been lived in it had been rented out to a meth lab before being repossessed and demolished to make way for a 12-lane highway.
"I guess I'm about even, when you take into account the drinks," I said, the stock reply of any Vegas gambler who is obviously losing money but in denial.
He laughed a short rasping laugh: "Yeah I hear ya. Some days you eat the bear, some days the bear eats you, my friend."
He wasn't wrong, though I seemed to be all too regularly a light snack for the bears in this town.
"I'd just like to sit down one day and have a machine that didn't hate me," I said, the tequila almost leaking out of my eyes by now.
"Yeah, I hear ya, just once maybe."
"....twice or three times would be better," I added as another twenty bit the dust.
He stopped his game, lit another smoke and leaned back in his seat and looked at me.
"That is where you are wrong, my friend. The reason you're here, the real reason we're all here is because we lose, not because we win."
What was this guy, some sort of guru high plains drifter?
"You reckon? I don't get much fun out of losing."
"Course you don't. But if you won all the time that'd be no fun either. It's the losing that makes the winning so damn glorious, my friend.
"It's all about the losing. I'm telling you, no-one would play a game they knew they couldn't lose. There's no life in that. And that's why we're here, me and you, just to make sure we're still alive...to try and feel something."
As he spoke, the freakin' machine dropped a full house into my lap and with it the best part of three hundred dollars. I was back to where I'd been an hour ago, just like that.
"See, how good would that have felt without that losing streak? Not nearly as sweet. I'm telling you, my friend, life is nothing without losing."
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