During the course of a conversation with a colleague, the meaning assigned by us to ‘winning’, ‘achievement’, and ‘satisfaction’ was discussed. Various questions and answers were hotly debated.
A few significant points, though, surfaced. One of them was that the process was more satisfying than the end result. The other was the ‘being’ was more important than the ‘becoming.’ Shift in the ‘being’ was thought to bring in immense satisfaction, immaterial of the fact whether the individual won or lost.
What stayed in our minds, however, was there were times when we had ‘easy victories’ and sometimes ‘hard victories. The easy ones brought no satisfaction whereas those fought hard indeed did. It was also a fact that many a time we did lose after a hard fought battle, but the efforts still seemed to be worthwhile and there was immense satisfaction. So it was always not about ‘winning’, but about how much of our potential was tested. Thus if a situation presented challenges and drew out the best in us, we seemed to be on top of the world.
Finally, we thought it was not about winning or losing, but all about unleashing our best and competing against odds and also ourselves. As Randy Pausch said ‘Stone walls are there for a reason ….
