Win the Game of Life

They say you should never read the comments. They would be right, of course. But sometimes I stray unwary in where it should be safe. Which is where my rant button got triggered, hard. And I thought I’d write it down, at length, only maybe with less f’bombs than in my head.

So this is what it started with, roughly paraphrased to protect the guilty: “You can’t win at life. Only the lucky and privileged ever win, talent and hard work don’t make any difference.”

Yeah, no. Fuck that for a game of thrones.

Ok, maybe I am keeping the f’bombs.

Fuck that thought. That thought is how they keep you down, my dude. That attitude will get you loser status in life. It isn’t that you have no money, or charisma of a wet dead fish - which is a calumny to fish, because fish are tasty eating - and it certainly isn’t that you worked hard. Because that? That’s the attitude of a quitter, and that’s why you’ve lost the game of life.

Here’s how you win at the game of life. You get up when you’re pushed down. You get up when you fall. You pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and you lower your shoulder into the obstacle, and you push. If you can see your way around it, walk away and find a new path. If you have to just gut it out, gut. You only lose the game when you quit. You win by being resilient in the face of disasters that would have lesser men rocking on the porch talking to themselves. Ask me how I know.

I know that if you are in a hole and you can barely see daylight overhead, you don’t lay down your tools and die. You dig. You plan your excavation, so the walls don’t fall in on you. You scrimp, and you save, and you budget, and you invest in the future in money and skills, and eventually you look up and you are fat and flourishing. The light is all around you. Your mistake is thinking that when you’re above your problems, you should be on the same plane with everyone else. Or at least the ones you think you want to be.

The hell with ‘hard work doesn’t pay’ and fuck privilege. Privilege is drawing another breath. Guess what. The rich guy you envy and sneer at is likely as depressed as you are. Or not. Doesn’t matter. What matters is being content with where you are, while working toward a better future. Your future, not his present. And there is no luck. There is only planning, and positioning. You plan to be in the right place at the right time, and you carefully position yourself to be there when the time is ripe, and you make that happen in such a way that others who don’t see all the falls, and the digging, and the dark nights with glimmers of hope... those people go ‘wow, he sure was lucky.’

Have a sucky job you hate? Spend your spare time learning skills you can take to a better one. Don’t have a job at all? Volunteer, find classes you can take - and yes, there are free ones. Find a mentor, but keep in mind no mentor worth their salt will take on a defeatist. It's a waste of their time and a trial on their patience. I’ve been broke, busted all the way to wondering where the next meal was coming from. I’m not there any more. I’m never going to be there again. You know why? I worked hard. Damn hard. I still do. I just pulled 21 hours in two days, not counting the side job. That’s nothing, compared to some of the crap I pulled back in the day to scrape every dollar I could into the coffer. I learned skills. Can’t afford a graphic designer? Teach myself. Can’t spend money on advertising? Spend hours learning sales and marketing, then countless hours on the phone being charming, happy, and winning clients who stuck with us for years afterward. Need to deliver consistently and on time? I can do that. I might not sleep much, but I will get it done.

In a relationship you feel like you can’t get out of because you can’t do better? Bullshit. Don’t try to sell that one to me. You might feel like you have to cater to her every whim in order to keep her with you, but buddy, that is textbook abusive behaviour, and I’m sad you can’t see it. Or you don’t want to. You could get out. You have friends who’ve told you for years you ought to. They would be there with supportive shoulders and willing ears if you’d pull yourself out of the morass of despair. But you won’t. You’ve given up on the game of life, and you’re just going to lie there until the mess sucks you under, and bleat about how unfair life is.

Be the person you want to be. Not that loser who dismisses the idea of winning as mere luck and family money (or good looks, or, insert the lazy privilege concept du jour here). You have talents. We all have a talent. Just don’t assume that because it doesn’t come easy that you don’t. What you might have is a talent for being persistent. For never letting life keep you down. Life is going to get you down. What then? Do you get back up, work hard, and make your own luck? Spit in the eye of the storm with a smile on your face, and never go down without a fight. Learn from your mistakes, heck, learn from other’s mistakes. Don’t mortgage your soul to another person because you think no one else can love you. Never give up. Never surrender.

Deep breath. I get worked up about these things. I am living proof that you can win at life. So I won’t let the myth propagate that you have to be lucky. Unlawfully fornicate that idea. You make your own luck. Just keep your chin up, keep smiling, and keep moving forward.