Winner

I happened to be in a restaurant during the Kentucky Derby Saturday.  Everyone at the counter on one side of the place shouted and cheered for those beautiful horses galloping their hearts out in a giant oval.  I’m guessing no one in the tiny band of locals at a small watering hole in South Carolina personally knew the participants.  Nonetheless, folks love a winner, a first place finisher. 

Dictionary.com succinctly defines winner as a person or thing that wins; victor.

If we ourselves cannot BE the winner we enjoy the next best thing:  supporting the victor.  It’s fun.  It pays for a lot of college bottom line budgets.  It gives camaraderie.  It feels good to see folks prepare, compete and win in a contest.  It also offers an opportunity for people to act negatively toward each other, to boo, call names and say things like, “In your face.” 

I’m contemplating whether this winner-loving attitude bleeds into our everyday approach to life?  Are we competing to affiliate with the champion in a race, cheering for our chosen pony, denying anyone else’s performance at the finish?  Do we even know who these metaphorical ponies are?  Do we manufacture hate toward those who connect with a group other than our own? 

I am undoubtedly a slow trotting pasture pony inclined to say, “I dunno” in response to a lot of questions.  I have no desire to start a smack-down declaring any one idea, club, team, or group right, wrong, good, bad, winner, looser, animal, vegetable or mineral.  My interest is introspection.  I’m not saying join in supporting any one thing.  I’m not saying don’t speak out for anything.  On the contrary, I think it is good to be passionate and connected to what you believe or enjoy.  Root for a team that you dearly love to see triumph. I think competition can be healthy and beneficial.  Don the hat, t-shirt or button and go for your cause.  I simply noticed a lot of folks got highly heated about horses running on TV and maybe, just maybe people get carried away with cheering or jeering and getting all worked up about winning without thinking about what or why we are yelling.

Quoted by The Associated Press after the Derby the second place horse’s owner said, “That’s the only time I’ve run second where I’ve been happy because he [the horse] ran his race.”  Amen.

Marathon

race to final place with fast and furious pace

pounding hearts and fists insist that the right

rests in the best way, the one say truth and life

can there be only one path on a planet or sun

full of things  to know and hearts to show just

how much foul we inflict or endure, each pure

wanting winner of what might be a bit better

would that we want everyone, daughter or son

to arrive hereafter in whatever order they can