“It's not the winning but the taking part that counts"
This is a phrase often attributed – at least in spirit – to the founder of the modern-day Olympic Games. It’s one of those phrases that seems trite at first, but whose simplicity also masks some complexity when you think about it a bit more deeply.
On the one hand, it is the justification for the school sports day participation medal. The idea that everyone deserves some glory from simply taking part, and that getting over the finishing line, whether first, last or somewhere in between is equally deserving of praise, regardless of how or why you got there, or whether you tried or not.
On the other, some would consider that you haven’t even taken part if you weren’t at least trying to win, however slim the odds.
What I am getting at, in a roundabout kind of way, is that, for me, taking part has always meant taking part with a purpose. It means concerted effort, sometimes to win, and at other times to try to meet some other pre-defined goal. I’ve always found effort rewarding when you hit your goal, and occasionally soul destroying when you don’t. But I’d always come back for more because the exaggerated highs and exhausting lows of meeting or missing your goals are part of life. Showing up without purpose feels, to me at least, like you’re not really living. Another was of putting it is that winning – or at least trying to – is what makes life worth living. Although I haven’t articulated it in this way before, and although I’m aware not everyone feels this way, I’ve always known it to be true for me.
I was reflecting on this after a long conversation with a friend about how the life of middling city wage slaves like us can sometimes make wins hard to come by. It can often feel like you are just showing up without a specific purpose. You wake up, shower, trundle to the office, flick on your laptop, get through work, come home, make dinner, sleep, rinse and repeat. What you are striving for becomes clouded by the necessity to just keep doing it. Long held ambitions get distorted, lost in fog and sometimes entirely forgotten. Striving to win becomes less important than merely taking part. Small everyday joys (that I am particularly bad at taking for granted) still don’t feel like things you’ve been purposefully chasing. They are more of a byproduct of just putting one foot in front of the other. Lethargically turning up without a purpose and just seeing what happens.
This is what makes the participation medal feel hollow and empty. When the prize isn’t allied to purposeful effort. When you get the bonus just for being there, even if you couldn’t really be bothered to try when you were.
So winning is, to me at least, pretty important. Or at least striving to win. Even playing geriatric-level sport and doing something quite good like scoring a goal or providing a sweet assist gives you the hit that other things can’t. It makes the mind fly and race and the vibes extend for days afterwards. Because you strived to be there and do the thing, and then did it. Because it cost you something to do it. You gave a part of yourself and got something in return. It felt good because you showed up with purpose and intention and not just a vague hope of getting through the day unscathed before doing the same tomorrow.
Finding purpose can be hard in the modern world, but it doesn’t mean it’s not worth striving for. In fact, quite the opposite. It is striving for purpose and for wins that we find the essence of our own humanity. We are more vibrant, more engaged and more alive.
At this point, I would normally segway awkwardly into a paragraph about a restaurant I’ve just visited, but for once this isn’t about that at all. It’s just a candid reflection on what winning means to me and why, however old, lazy and institutionalized we become, it will always be important to strive for that next “W”, whether you actually get the win or not.
It also got me thinking about exactly what makes me me, so to speak. Everyone has ruts, but over the last few years I think I have been experiencing a slightly more existential dip. These happen now and again too. One very memorable low was in Summer 2012, which turned what should have been a glorious summer of sport watching into a deep cave of self-loathing.
The commonality between these eras is a kind of listlessness and loss of purpose, which manifests itself in lots of time lounging and sleeping and perhaps too much introspective thinking and writing like this. The opposite of these periods is characterised by a kind of freewheeling spontaneity where anything feels possible and energy feels like an inexhaustible resource. In one of these periods after I moved to Hong Kong, I would frequently gym at 10pm at night – having already gone in the morning before work – and genuinely felt like I could push myself further and harder in every aspect of life. I was loving it. At its antithesis, about 30 minutes of socialising leaves me gasping for breath and praying for bed.
How then, to create this flow state and, if not eliminate, at least moderate, the nadirs?
There isn’t an easy answer, for sure. But here are some things. Talk to someone. Exercise the body and the brain. Rest when you need to and don’t feel bad about it. Talk to someone. Talk to someone. Talk to someone. But most of all, find purpose. Find something to cling onto in the dark moments that allows you to feel the joys of striving for something. Don’t just participate. Play to win. Because regardless of the result, then and only then will the participation really feel like it counts.
