I hate winning.
I enjoy card games and messing around on a basketball court, but I’m much happier in the end for my competitors to emerge victorious. There’s nothing worse than having to spend time with people who are disappointed.
Luckily, being physically uncoordinated and lousy at cards and bad at strategy and totally unable to keep more than one chess move in my head has allowed me to live a life where I rarely find myself in the situation of having to come out on top.
Occasionally fate will render an opponent too drunk to block my wobbly air-hockey puck and my worst nightmare comes to pass: I now have to spend an evening with an unhappy friend because not only has he lost a game, but lost to me.
I recognize this puts me at odds with a certain aspect of our national character.
I’m taken aback when people say they’re going to vote for a particular candidate because he’s, first and foremost, a winner. Winning is fine as far as that goes, and I imagine it feels pretty good; but being able to humble yourself in the face of defeat is also an important quality -- and claiming to never lose is a sort of pathology that should be monitored, not rewarded.
And if you think voting for a winner makes you a winner, I’ll just humbly inform you that I happened to vote for the winning presidential candidate in the last two elections, and believe me, I am no winner. Happily so.
I’m Dan Libman, and that’s my perspective.
