Learning to Lose
There's this Harry Potter fic of which I am uncommonly fond, called Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. I quite recommend it despite its flaws, although you should be warned it definitly seems to be a love-it-or-loathe it kind of thing, so YMMV to the extreme. Anyhow. This fic is relevant to the post at hand because one of the things Harry Potter has to learn over the course of the story is how to lose. I believe he spends an entire DADA class getting beaten up and humiliated by Slytherins in pursuit of this goal, while his Professor and classmates look on. Later on, when an attempt to goad Snape backfires and Snape reveals all the horrible things James Potter and his friends did, Harry's first thought is: lose. Lose immediately. And then he does so.
And both of these scenes are painful to read, because it's hard to watch your hero lose. To actually lose, not just to suffer a temporary setback and then win the day. But they really stuck in my head, because if there's one thing I'm bad at, it's losing. I don't like backing down. I don't like letting other people get the last word, even in a friendly debate. I don't like yielding to perceived cruelty or injustice or plain old garden variety stupidity. And sometimes that's a very good trait, I think! I'd like to believe that, say, my childhood obstinacy in the face of bullying assholes saved some of my peers a lot of pain. While bringing it down on my own head instead, of course. My childhood self was too goddamned Gryffindor for her own good, and that's a fact.
Sometimes, though, you can't win. Gryffindor does not work in every situation; sometimes adulthood requires a little Slytherin. Sometimes "winning" is pointless, or literally impossible, or just plain rude (oh, so un-Canadian!), or gains you the battle while losing you the war. Sometimes the closest you can get to winning is losing quickly , and on your own terms, so that defeat doesn't hurt quite so much. And I've been trying very hard to recognize those occasions, and say to myself, lose. Lose immediately. And then swallow my pointless pride and really truly lose . It's something I think about a lot - and sometimes write about, eg. Within It We Are Nameless - but my success in this area has been mixed.
Tonight, I had to lose. I had to spend twenty minutes grovelling, begging an older relative for their forgiveness for the crime of "disrespecting my elders", which here means "interrupting an adult conversation to add an unwelcome opinion". Where "adult" apparently means "over fifty", given that I am >twenty one years old, and "unwelcome opinion" here means "the opinion actually held by every single member of the group except for the relative in question". But this older relative controls my access to her daughter, with whom I am desperately trying to build a better relationship. Her daughter, who this relative constantly insults and belittles within the daughter's earshot, to the point where I'm very nearly willing to call it emotional abuse and be done with it. Her daughter, who I think really needs some outside support. So I sucked it up, and I lost, and I lost, and I lost, and then because I lost I won, and because I won the daughter won, and tomorrow we're going out for ice cream. A small thing, to be sure, but it's my third attempt at organizing this kind of simple outing, and it feels like a huge victory to have finally succeeded.
And maybe the mature thing now would be to let it go, now. Because I won! I won, and I had my ranty time with Sophia and my mother in the aftermath, and now it's over. But I keep thinking about spending those twenty minutes listening to this relative insult me, and my mother, and the daughter, again and again, and not fighting back. Not only letting all the vile things that were said stand unchallenged, but actually agreeing with them, treating her crazy bullshit like legitimate grievance... it sticks in my craw. It makes my gut churn; makes me, quite literally, feel sick. Despite my efforts I remain, I think, very bad at losing, even when it means I get to win.
I don't know where this post was going. I don't know how this story ends. Maybe I should have waited until tomorrow night, so that the final lines could be, "And the icecream was delicious, and we had a lovely talk, and I feel utterly, utterly vindicated." But the problem is, even if that's true, the story doesn't end there. If I want to be a part of this girl's life, then I have to keep losing to this older relative. Again and again and again, for years and years to come. I need to put away the Gryffindor, and bring out my inner clever Ravenclaw, my inner subtle Slytherin. Even my inner hardworking Hufflepuff would be more useful here. I need to learn to lose.
And, yes, I'm twenty-one and I still use the Hogwarts house paradigm to help me understand myself and the world. Shut up. I AM THE COOLEST. Obvs.
crossposted from Dreamwidth |
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