I’m a Loser

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, John, but we’re not going to renew your contract next year.”

The words stung.

What made it worse was that the words came from Roger, who was not only my boss but my friend. Roger was the Residential Life Coordinator for the university dorms where I served as a resident assistant.

Resident assistants receive free room and board, and in return, they counsel residents, make referrals, organize events, and generally ensure that residential life goes smoothly.

I felt bad like I failed Roger. And I wasn’t looking forward to telling my father, because now he’d be on the hook to cover my room and board the following year.

I remember thinking to myself, “I’m a loser.”

Loss invites reflection and reformulating and a change of strategies

The late author Pat Conroy knew quite a bit about losing.

In his memoir My Losing Season, Conroy revisits his senior season as a starting point guard on the basketball team of The Citadel in 1966–67.

Conroy was an unlikely candidate to enroll in The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina. He was an aspiring writer and poet, and not well-suited for the hazing and male machismo common in military colleges.

But Conroy loved basketball, despite his limited talent for the sport. Conroy’s abusive father (a Marine Corps Colonel and fighter pilot) used to play basketball, and Conroy hoped his father would love him more if he too played the sport.

Conroy had a fractious relationship with the basketball team’s coach, Mel Thompson, and even Conroy’s father found reasons to criticize his son’s playing. But by his senior year, Conroy was a decent point guard and Captain of the team.

Unfortunately, they only won 8 out of 25 games.

Defeat in so many games would make anyone feel like a loser. In My Losing Season, Conroy wrote:

Loss invites reflection and reformulating and a change of strategies. Loss hurts and bleeds and aches. Loss is always ready to call out your name in the night. Loss follows you home and taunts you at the breakfast table, follows you to work in the morning. You have to make accommodations and broker deals to soften the rabbit punches that loss brings to your daily life. You have to take the word ‘loser’ and add it to your resume and walk around with it on your name tag as it hand-feeds you your own shit in dosages too large for even great beasts to swallow. The word ‘loser’ follows you, bird-dogs you, sniffs you out of whatever fields you hide in because you have to face things clearly and you cannot turn away from what is true.

We all face defeat in our lives.

Whether we fail to make the team, lose an employment contract, or watch our business go under, sooner or later we’ll feel like a loser. But life is about far more than the false binary of winning and losing.

The greatest life lessons are found in the nuance. Truth is sometimes hidden in the texture.

In My Losing Season, Conroy notes:

There is no downside to winning. It feels forever fabulous. But there is no teacher more discriminating or transforming than loss. The great secret of athletics is that you can learn more from losing than winning.

Indeed, there is no teacher more discriminating or transforming than loss.

You learn more from losing than winning. I have found this to be repeatedly true my entire life.

When Roger told me he would not be renewing my Resident Assistant contract, deep down I knew it was the right decision. The enthusiasm and energy I once had for the position had waned, and it showed in my work. I learned how important it was to pursue work that truly interested me.

When I told my father that I would not be hired back as a Resident Assistant, he said, “Well, don’t you worry about it. Just learn from any mistakes, and I’ll take care of your senior year’s room and board.”

Just learn from any mistakes.

That was Dad. Always wise, kind, supportive, and loving.

It’s the wrong question

Recently the NBA’s Miami Heat defeated the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks, denying their path to the playoffs.

Minutes after the stunning defeat, a reporter asked the Bucks’ star player, Giannis Antetokounmpo, if he considered their entire season to be a failure. Antetokounmpo, after taking a moment to put his head in his hands, delivered a brilliant, nuanced response:

Do you get a promotion every year, in your job? No, right? So every year you work is a failure? Yes or no. No? Every year you work, you work towards something, towards a goal, which is to get a promotion, to be able to take care of your family, provide a house for them, or take care of your parents. You work towards a goal — it’s not a failure. It’s steps to success.

Antetokounmpo told the reporter he was not attacking him. His answer wasn’t personal. And then he added:

Michael Jordan played 15 years, won six championships. The other nine years [were] a failure? That’s what you’re telling me…why do you ask me that question? It’s the wrong question.

We often ask the wrong question.

Instead of asking, “Am I a loser?” perhaps we should ask, “What have I learned? What can I do better? Where can I improve? Is this the right work, or path for my talents?”

In a recent Wall Street Journal article about Giannis Antetokounmpo, reporter Jason Gay wrote about Antetokounmpo’s humble Greek-born roots, and how hard he worked to build his talent and lift his team. All while keeping things in perspective.

Inspired by Antetokounmpo’s thinking, Gay wrote:

Failures can be abrupt and sudden, but successes are incremental, their gestation and development often hidden from sight. As a zillion self-help books have lectured us, success is often born from our lowest moments, so the idea that an experience can be brightly labeled and tossed away is absurd.

Success is often born from our lowest moments.

I learned this lesson after I lost my Resident Assistant job. Pat Conroy figured it out during his basketball years at The Citadel. And Giannis Antetokounmpo echoed the same wisdom in his brilliant interview.

The next time you experience defeat, don’t say, “I’m a loser.” Say, “I’m a student of life. What have I learned?”

Let life pour through you

Last year my wife and I were on holiday in Scotland, touring the countryside by car, train, and boat.

One lovely afternoon we explored the Isle of Jura and visited its famous whiskey distillery. I don’t care for liquor and skipped the tour. Armed with my rangefinder camera, I set off to take some local photographs.

I noticed an energetic little bird flitting around the trees and tried several times to get a photo of him.

Unfortunately, the bird was quick as lightning, and none of the photos were any good. Just a blur of feathers and tree branches.

Dejected, I sat on a stone wall, feeling like a photography loser.

But then the bird suddenly alighted on the wall beside me. Maybe he took pity on me, or maybe some things in life just come down to serendipitous timing.

I crouched slowly, focused, and took the shot. Turns out I’m not a photography loser.

None of us are losers.

We’re all just trying our best to reach our goals and dreams. Our wins may be joyous, but our losses teach us volumes about patience, modesty, sympathy for others, and that our efforts and experiences are never wasted.

Pat Conroy shared the following advice for writers in My Losing Season:

You do not learn how to write novels in a writing program. You learn how by leading an interesting life. Open yourself up to all experience. Let life pour through you the way light pours through leaves.

Don’t let the fear of losing prevent you from living. Loss stings, but it instructs. As Pat Conroy wrote, “…the darker music of loss resonates on deeper, richer planes.”

Let life pour through you the way light pours through leaves. Accept the losses in life. Learn from them. Never call yourself a loser.

After all, winners are losers who got back up and gave it one more try.

Before you go

I’m John P. Weiss. I write elegant stories and essays about life. If you enjoyed this piece, check out my free weekend newsletter, The Saturday Letters.

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This post was previously published on Medium.com.

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Photo by John P. Weiss