The thing about success today is it is all about winning.
Getting the big promotion; Being hired for the great job; Signing the big client; Having your dream woman or man say “yes I will marry you”; Writing the latest New York Times #1 best seller; Buying the winning Powerball ticket; Supporting the Super Bowl champion team…
Yet the cost of winning is producing far more losers.
Have you given much consideration to what happens to the losers? This is a trick question, because all of us know exactly what happens to the losers since we have all lost many times. When we don’t get the big promotion or get hired for the dream job or our perfect man or woman says “no”, the whole trajectory of our lives is changed. The range of choices we have to provide for ourselves and our families are diminished. And as these losses pile up, we find ourselves acquiescing to lives of faded dreams.
But the cost of losing is not just aspirational.
The quality of the food we eat, the comfort of our shelter, the security of our neighborhood, our access to timely & effective healthcare, and so much more are all tied to our wins and losses.
For those of us who have more wins than losses, we are encouraged to feel we earned the spoils of our victories. And for the rest of us, we are encouraged to accept lives made excessively harder and often shorter as the cost of losing.
It is nothing short of casual cruelty to know we waste more than enough resources to provide nutritious food, safe housing, and quality healthcare for the less fortunately amongst us.
The fact that we don’t reveals the true price of winning…the loss of our basic humanity.