That One Smile

10:30 AM.

It was thirty minutes past the hour of ten in the morning. The sun was beaming glaringly everywhere. I rushed to my building and swiftly glided across the room, so not to catch everyone’s attention. All I could hear were strokes of the keyboard. I was late. I was thirty minutes late. I told myself, ‘maybe everybody’s just a little early’.

I jumped onto my seat, pushed the lever up to elevate my position. I turned my laptop on and checked a pile of emails waiting to be read; each one was tagged ‘highly important’.

My morning was busy, I started the day with the usual routines I often do at work. I moved out from my desk and hopped into a meeting; it lasted two hours.

The Underdog

“Nobody deserves the second spot.” This is what my Philosophy professor said. “We all have a chance at the top, maybe not at the same areas, but somewhere out there, we all have a spot that we can claim our own.”

Everybody indeed has a spot. A place where we can gross the bragging rights for ourselves alone, defeating any other who owns their own spot somewhere, but not this, this is mine.

Defeat is part of the game. One wins, and the other loses. This is by default, the nature. But what does it take to win?

Winning is about knowing your game. It is about playing the right ball, at the right time, with the right attitude. It is about choosing what you can play best. Experience is a plus factor, but is not prerequisite to victory while luck is just a bonus.

Losing, doesn’t mean you failed. It only signifies either the game is not blueprinted for you or you’ve got some more warming up to do. But to know that you are about to lose should not stop you from playing the game. To have the wisdom for failure is a gift only the courageous ought to have and appreciate. To still play the game even though you are an inch close to failure nurtures your heart and soul the way only failure can. Humility is usually earned not compelled and this is the best prize in losing, because it is in humility that you are able to make yourself whole again. It is not in the fulfillment you get in winning that you are able to see your self-worth. What you have seen is just the ‘can’ part of you while self-worth is made up of what you ‘can’ and ‘cannot’. One is never whole without the emptiness to be filled upon.

Losing for the second spot isn’t losing after all. It just means either of the two things. Even though it doesn’t mean losing, nobody still deserves to be just number two. We need to find that spot. That spot which we can assert our own.

You could steal the game though, but you know that isn't right.

Playing a game that you know you are going to lose isn’t masochism nor hypocrisy. It is a pursuit or self worth fulfillment. So play anyway, and play it fair. You can win the first place or win the consolation form in wisdom. 

There are no underdogs. Just players in quest whether this spot was theirs from the start.  

YOLO!

It has been 21 years since I first saw light illuminating from the four corners of the room. I could barely see anything but the glares flashing through my eyelids.

The only sound I could hear were distressful cries from a woman in pain while another woman was chanting in sermon saying ‘push!’.

That was the moment I was born (although the cries and the flashing lights are a little bit fabricated, of course), and the moment that everything turned to be a written script just like in the movies. Like most kids, I have grown up in the premises of a to-do checklist. I was inducted not upon a second thought in a life-long sketch I have never dreamt while I was a little boy – I wanted to be a doctor, a scientist, an architect and even a singer. None of those seem too feasible. I did not end up loathing; although I made sure that the world understood how wishful and eager I am to have a choice of my own, it was my future after all.