A lot of people think I'm weird because music infiltrates most, if not all, aspects of my life. I couldn't live without music. That is not hyperbole. Physically, I would endure without music, but spiritually I would be a dried husk. Ever since I was a babe in arms, I've loved music from the home-made lullabies my parents sang me to the well-known children's songs that played on the children's session on the radio.
A lot of what happens in my life reminds me of particular songs. It amuses and befuddles my youngest son who doesn't know whether to be embarrassed or laugh when his father responds in song to some question he has posed or statement he has made.
And so I was thinking about how human society views success. Quite rightly, it is lauded and celebrated. But what of the statistically bigger portion of the human population who must lose in order for a much smaller proportion of the human population to win.
One day, I was vacuuming and playing Tom Petty's hits collection, Anthology, very loudly on the stereo. I love Tom's no-nonsense Southern rock'n'roll. The man is poetic and often underrated in the lyrical department. And, of course, one of the songs was Even the Losers Get Lucky Some Times.
That made me think of how many of us live our lives with very little chance of winning a Nobel Prize, an Olympic medal, Lotto or any of the many standard bearers of achievement, high or otherwise. But as we make our way through our lives with their minor triumphs and petty disappointments, we often miss the very things that make us winners, albeit on a modest scale.
When a child is born to us, healthy and full of promise, we are winners. When someone compliments us on something we wear or our garden or praises us for something we did at work, we are winners. When we surf that wave to the best of our ability, when we do a kindness for another human being or animal, when we get out of bed and go for a run or do some exercise, when we phone a distant friend or loved one, when we are kind and gracious to our children, when we do the right thing morally when the going is tough and temptations are all around, we are winners. Every day in many small ways that we often overlook, the losers get lucky.
A lot of what happens in my life reminds me of particular songs. It amuses and befuddles my youngest son who doesn't know whether to be embarrassed or laugh when his father responds in song to some question he has posed or statement he has made.
And so I was thinking about how human society views success. Quite rightly, it is lauded and celebrated. But what of the statistically bigger portion of the human population who must lose in order for a much smaller proportion of the human population to win.
One day, I was vacuuming and playing Tom Petty's hits collection, Anthology, very loudly on the stereo. I love Tom's no-nonsense Southern rock'n'roll. The man is poetic and often underrated in the lyrical department. And, of course, one of the songs was Even the Losers Get Lucky Some Times.
That made me think of how many of us live our lives with very little chance of winning a Nobel Prize, an Olympic medal, Lotto or any of the many standard bearers of achievement, high or otherwise. But as we make our way through our lives with their minor triumphs and petty disappointments, we often miss the very things that make us winners, albeit on a modest scale.
When a child is born to us, healthy and full of promise, we are winners. When someone compliments us on something we wear or our garden or praises us for something we did at work, we are winners. When we surf that wave to the best of our ability, when we do a kindness for another human being or animal, when we get out of bed and go for a run or do some exercise, when we phone a distant friend or loved one, when we are kind and gracious to our children, when we do the right thing morally when the going is tough and temptations are all around, we are winners. Every day in many small ways that we often overlook, the losers get lucky.
So the meek do inherit the earth, if by that we mean these small everyday things. The word 'winner' is so overladen with the notion of competition though, isn't it.
ReplyDelete