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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