Defeat

We don’t like to think about defeat. We don’t like to talk about it either. Not real defeat, anyway.

Defeat is isolating. Overwhelming. It’s a feeling in the pit of your stomach that makes you want to curl up into a ball. Nothing feels good. There is no relief.

We have lots of colloquialisms for handling defeat that all boil down to “It’s going to be okay,” and “You should try again.” True and good advice respectively. And absolutely no help when you’re in it.

Yes, I know Steve Jobs lost Apple before reclaiming it. I know Michael Jordan lost to the Pistons before he was a Champion. I am aware that it is always darkest before the dawn and that if I fall down 9 times I should get up 10.

Thank you.

The people who tell us these things know it doesn’t help, especially if they’ve ever felt defeat’s sting. Perhaps they suggest these things as a way to tell us, “There’s nothing I can do. Figure it out.” And they’re right. When you look defeat in it’s cold, dead eyes, you have to do it alone. That’s the only way to overcome it.

If someone rescues you from the clutches of defeat, you haven’t really escaped the bill. You’ve deferred your payments. And there is only one currency defeat accepts. Your complete, absolute, unrepentant surrender.

But defeat does not want you to surrender to it. It’s not asking you to accept that whatever is on the other side of the obstacle will never be yours, or that you place your attention on some other, more attainable goal. That would be too easy. Defeat demands a much higher price: The surrender to victory. Your absolute willingness to surrender everything you have in order to have it. Your money, your time, your comfort, your sense of who you are. You have to accept that the reason you exist is for this thing. And at exactly that moment, defeat will give you it’s greatest gift, whether it is truly the thing you set out to win in the first place or not: You.