Finish Second
This was a clue from Sunday’s crossword puzzle. I enjoy doing crosswords in my spare time. I feel like I always learn something. And they always keep me humble. When I saw this clue I immediately knew the answer. So fast it was a reaction. I was surprised at how quickly my hand leapt to the page to enter “loser”. Yeah, that was my gut reaction for placing second. By the time I had processed my exceptionally competitive response, I was already staring at the wrong answer I’d entered.
Wrong answers. You would think for someone who is so often wrong, I’d be used to it; desensitized to the sting of humility. Wrong answers fill my life so that you could count my age in days by them like tree rings. But this one in particular struck me mute. Loser? Really? There was a time in my life, many, many, many ages ago, when my competitiveness was legendary and well regarded. Not that anyone’s regard for anything renders any sort of quality. Just that I was praised more than admonished. And I think that’s fair. Much good has been done in the name of competition. Equally, much evil has been avoided because of the focus it brings. Imagine the sheer destruction wrought by a generation of teenage boys with no competitive outlet! The destructive side of competition is deadly though. Deadly for friendships, altruism, Christian living, relationships, marriages, even life itself. I think as I get older, and more wrong answers wrap themselves around my branches, I tend to shy away from competition. Not necessarily for fear of losing (or second place apparently!), though make no mistake that even now I don’t like to lose, but rather out of the desire for purer motivations. If not purer, than at least clearer and more intuitive. To put aside the blind, heated passions that assailed my younger years and assume a more… sophisticated, intellectual approach. And so the paths I travel are well architected and intended. My motivation, firm in its rightness, simply and steadfastly marches on towards whatever end it deems worthy of completion.
But what happens when, out of habit or fear or threat of existential collapse, you continue down a path long after motivation has taken its leave of you? The task demands, or perhaps affords, your hyper focus in a way that it could not before when the fuels of competition’s passion ran dry. What then, when a slight pause invites the Gretchenfrage? I suppose some sort of revelation, or perhaps stoic acceptance, sets in. I do what I must to carry on. All the toils of man and beast are for nought. Quoi est le Raison d’être? The temperature and ferocity with which our passions flow preclude such questions. And I’m not certain any longer that either motivation, be it born of passion or intellect, is superior. There is certainly much to be said for the methodical approach adopted by the sophist. But just as much to be gained from passion. Plato firmly held that in order for one to truly know a thing, they must be able to describe that thing. Now I’m not about to defend, or attack, rationalism, but I do think that human beings naturally trend in this sort of deterministic direction. We are curious by nature and seek to define our world, and experiences. We so quickly blur the line between description and prescription though. And what then becomes of the vulgar? The sensual? The indescribable, undefinable? That very part of us that defies logic or reason? That part that is so at odds with our intellect that we label it as reckless? That… soft touch on the lip… the faint fingertip down the spine… the delicate secret gently placed upon the ear… the lover’s naked nape… that mistress’s reluctant moan…
Unfortunately I have no answer. But I, for a moment perhaps, count myself lucky that somewhere deep inside of me is the passion that considers second place the first loser.
“PLACE”. That was the answer to the clue in case you were curious.
