Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake—Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower
8. SOMETIMES WHEN YOU WIN, YOU LOSE
Jon Bowen was running a 10K (6.2 miles) race, the Harvest Moon Classic, in Washington, D.C. He had trained very hard for the race and was on target for a personal best time as he neared the halfway point. Suddenly, the runner in front of him twisted his ankle in a pothole and fell to the cement. The fallen runner grasped his ankle as he rolled onto his back. In one instant Mr. Bowen was faced with the decision whether to stop and help or run on past. He later explained that he had faced a moral dichotomy: “Duty to fellow man or every man for himself?”
He didn’t stop. In fact, he hurdled the runner in an effort to avoid losing precious time. When he glanced over his shoulder he saw that a woman runner had stopped to lend a hand. In the end, Bowen did finish with his personal record, but it bothered him that he made, in his words, “the selfish choice.”
Quoting novelist Ian McEwan, who wrote, “Selfishness is written in our hearts,” Bowen said that he believes compassion is in our hearts too. The challenge when you are heading for the finish line, he explained, “is knowing when to let compassion take the lead. Next time I hope to make the right choice.”
A story like this invites us to rethink our definition of winning. To borrow a line from a popular movie, “sometimes when you win you lose. . . .” Jon Bowen won in the sense that he ran the race in a personal best time but later recognized that he had lost in a deeper sense. He made a choice of shortsighted winning over a more lasting kind of victory.
Each of us encounters this kind of choice everyday. It can be an opportunity to lend a hand when someone needs our help at work or to stop what we are doing and listen when a friend needs someone to talk to. Making the right choice when it temporarily distracts from our progress is the challenge. Sometimes we need to stay on task, but sometimes it’s even more important to help someone else.
A wise lesson is in learning that the shortest route to victory may be a trap that can cause us to lose more than we gain. Perhaps the woman who stopped to help the fallen runner understood this; if she chose the seemingly clearest path for a short-term win she would lose in a way that her hollow victory could never compensate for. She seemed to understand that sometimes when you win, you lose.
The shortest route to victory may be a trap that can cost us more than we stand to gain.
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