Courtesy: The Electric New Paper


The art of losing

By Aldrina Thirunagaran

January 18, 2009

MY WOMEN'S futsal team lost 1-11 in an amateur league organised by ESPZen, for 'weekend warriors'. And I refer to this as our 'best loss' to date.

Oh, I could go on about how we had tough opposition and how we're a new team in a sea of seasoned players. But I'm not going down this road despite our string of crushing defeats.

So, why don't I feel an extremely large dollop of hot shame rushing to my cheeks or just downright terrible?

As a goalkeeper, shouldn't the mind-altering guilt that I've let my team down haunt me all my days?

Uh-huh. I'm not shaken because losing is all in the mind. One of my favourite writers, Vladimir Nabokov, stipulates 'less the keeper of a goal than a keeper of a dream'.

Stay focused on your dreams and you learn the art of managing loss, while waiting for success to happen.

In a society where kiasu-ism is rife and winning seems to be everything, here is some chicken soup for their soul. We all need it because someone has to lose and we can't always be winning.

No shame in failure

When a reporter asked Thomas Edison, 'How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?' Edison replied, 'I didn't fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.'

So to my futsal team, our past defeats are just part of our 1,000 steps. We will see light eventually.

So let us picture this scenario more than half a century ago: Britain in turmoil and in the middle of the war. What happens? It appoints a man in his 60s who was defeated in every election up till then. Yes, that man was Sir Winston Churchill.

If Churchill had given up, gone would be that iconic image where he sticks to us the two fingers of victory. That said, when faced with threat or even a mere glimmer of failure, I know where most of us would want to stick those two fingers.

Thankfully, my teammates are a great bunch and incredibly supportive. At the end of the day, I feel we have won in other areas - trying new strategies and having camaraderie and a gung-ho attitude.

As one of my teammates says, losing is 'practice' for the longer term. Plus, people seem to respect the underdog - those who have been knocked down by adversity. In losing, we have gained a following of other teammates ready to dish out tips and advice as well as the occasional pep-talk from the referees themselves (off the pitch of course).

This will all serve us well.

Smile

Despite losing the democratic presidential candidate bid in 2008, Hillary Clinton is still smiling and she has smiled her way to the Secretary of State post. Clearly, rage is not the answer. The power of humour is often underestimated.

Social networking phenomenon Facebook draws on humour constantly. An application, Superpoke, allows users to greet each other with a whole slew of actions for every occasion. I know, I Superpoke my friends notoriously. Rather than say hello, I play Twister with or defrost them. Amusingly, there is an 'Epic Fail' action.

So when someone 'Epic Fails' you, you can always 'throw a breast implant' at them.

All good fun, but duck if it looks like it's from Pamela Anderson.

- The writer is a picture researcher with a media company based here.









Posted by Luca Ranocchiari --> luca.ranocchiari@futsalplanet.com