Chapter X. There Are No Winners or Losers at Life, There is Only Life Itself

There are no winners or losers at life, there is only life itself.

Examine this statement, and remember it when you find yourself confronted by that most bitter fear of defeat, or the seeming need for dominance or wealth. Victory? What Victory is to be had in this world of great and seemingly eternal time? What do you expect that it might take to be among the winners, when there is no end to space or the ravages of entropy’s vivid decays? And who might count themselves a loser that has seen the sun set behind the hills, or felt upon their face the first hazy droplets of an early springtime mist? Who was so unloved in their life that they could be counted as a failure? Who has left a mark upon the universe so broad and timeless and profound that we might say he has reached a final success? There are none!

The seamless flow of life leaves no room for error, and the judgments of an empty sky proclaim no rank or honors. There is nothing you can do that will impress, surprise, offend, distract or seduce your creator, I promise you that. There is no haggard disciplinarian floating in the sky, marking in her book each time that you’ve misspoken or spilled soup on your mom. There are no bronzed Olympians set to punish your malfeasance or celebrate the conquests of your younger years. Don’t you see? There are only the forces of Life, endlessly flowing and reshaping themselves! How could you hope to violate the laws of physics? How could you wish to impress a quantum probability? By what madness does one attempt to outshine the building blocks of their own being??? Let go this foolish notion!

This is a world of fools and giants, of businessmen and doctors and hopeless layabouts. There are children and hoboes and artist and stillborn babies. There are world-class soccer stars and teen idols and ugly, ugly little girls want to grow up to be the Queen of Norway. Are any more important in the eyes of the sun? I tell you now, your successes and your failures will more than likely be forgotten in a hundred years. What possibility that they’ll be known in a million? What chance that at the end of unending and eternal being [time] a universe of dust will collect and recollect one final time how nice it was to make a George for just one instant? Do I dare to hope? But I do! What lunacy!

Every day human lives come and go as nameless breezes across a distant countryside, and though mourned or praised or celebrated in their passing the markers are brief and ultimately arbitrary, eddies in the greater ebb and flow of a universal tide. There are those who we cherish, most often the teachers and comedians who make time pass with a smoothness and levity that give us moments to take pause and recollect the crudeness and brevity of our personal forms. And more than that, there are those specks of dust who are so dear to us, so close in heart that they confirm the longings of our souls with just a smile. For them, and for those precious few moments that we once passed each other in the sky, perhaps all of this vast expanse of being is made worthwhile. [passing in the sky may be a better way to end the paragraph. Switch?]

Perhaps it would be of benefit, in understanding the profound immensity of that misunderstanding which leads some to believe that they must be the winners, that they mustn’t be the losers, that we consider first our lives as taking place in a badly overgrown village (which is true). Can’t you see that each of us has some job that we might do? That there is some task for which we find ourselves to be well suited, and that brings us some delight? Perhaps it does not pay well, or is looked down upon by others (no doubt for the typically inane reasons by which people have historically looked down on anything). Perhaps many people say, “there is no need to do that! You are only wasting time! You poets and dreamers are just a bunch of rotten no-goodnicks!” (The irony of course is that these folk need some poetry in their day more than others who can see it all about, floating on the air).

Well, there is no task so small and unimportant that it does not merit doing, if it brings some joy into this world. And there is no role so charged that in filling it a man gains a cosmic worth greater than that of a damaged and demented flea. Though today worth and appreciation are passed about as a second currency, and we are taught that we must justify our birth by word or deed or salary, the truth that shines in the eyes of the mystic and the genius and the Fool is that we are here for no reason but to Live, and fully!

What obvious unchallengeable facts have led you to believe that the universe was created in the hope that someone, somewhere, some day, would finally and irrevocably draw forth a salary so high that he might impress a stranger with his jewels? Or that the vast expanses of consciousness by which all things are known and felt willfully pursue the hope that one day a young woman might set aside her dreams of mastering the banjo [flute? Harpsichord? An exotic instrument? The sitar?] to pursue the practice of copyright law? Do you really think the moon was hung in the hope that one day we would have the might to shoot it down? Or that you should neglect to even try to be the hero in your dreams because of the careless criticisms of a friend who is not living your life?

This is it! There is no practice run, and no way to start anew when it dawns on you that you never took a chance. This is the real deal, your big shot, the one chance that you will ever have to be that which you have dreamed! No one has ever grown into greatness by trying to impress his friends! And just as surely, no one has ever become a radiant beacon of possibility when fed mediocre dreams! Here is the world of your vast potential! Now is the time to pursue your transformation! The unconquerable Now!

There are no winners! There are no losers! There is only greatness for the sake of greatness, love for the joy of love. We each have been gifted with a life of unknowable potential to unfold, what blossomings of hope might lay ahead!? Suck the marrow from your moments! There is no one to live your life for you, and no one for whom to live your life. Take the time to stretch your wings, of course, but do not stretch them for the stretch alone! Stretch them that you might fly, and test the limits of human striving.

Or, perhaps, you have some better idea?