Me: Dad, who wins more: you or Ted.
Dad: Oh, I don’t know, it’s probably about even.
Me: Come on Dad, really. Who wins more.
(he thought about it for a few seconds)
Dad: Well, if we played 50 times, I might win 26, and Ted might win 24.
Some time later, when I was in my teens and he realized he couldn’t snow me in quite the same way, I asked him about playing Ted again. This time he opened up. He told me that, while he’s a much better player than Ted, he just enjoys playing and wants Ted to enjoy it, too. So instead of clobbering Ted he would make shots that he thought would lead to interesting play – but not necessarily win him the point. He talked about moving the ball around, setting up shots that Ted would return in ways that would challenge Dad. He also talked about letting Ted win to keep Ted’s enthusiasm in playing the game.
While there have been moments in my life where I emulated Dad’s approach, more often I was simply focused on winning. When I was younger, this was a mix of my natural competitiveness, drive for excellence, and a fragile ego. As I’ve gotten older the ego motivation is no more yet my natural drives along with competition being framed in the goal of winning lead me to play to win.
Yet, this becomes increasingly unrewarding. I already know that I’m going to win at least my fair share of games. What typically happens, when I am playing a game that is not rated or in a tournament, is about halfway or 2/3 of the way through – assuming I assess that I have a decent chance to win – is that I become self-aware and start regretting the potential of my winning. After all, I consider most of the impacts that come from my winning to be negative. Other players might perceive or even resent my winning too much. Or, they might feel badly for their winning less. Or, they might gang up on me in a future game, making the process of playing less fun and more antagonistic. Or, or, or. Besides, I certainly don’t like the attention of winning. Even when I win, I really don’t want it to be acknowledged or recognized. I have a set list of deflectors starting with good luck and continuing with more contextual specifics, to downplay my success to the greatest possible extent.
Despite all of this, I haven’t been able to change my framing the same way Dad did. It is only well into the game, when I think I have a decent chance of winning, that I begin to cogitate on the fact it would be a net negative if I actually won. But, even then, I want to play hard and do my best to see if I would win, and go on to sometimes do just that. Not that it is important to my ego, but that it is resonant with my intellectual curiosity. This is all despite the fact that I intuitively would have more fun if I re-framed my objective from before the game began, away from driving to win and instead to alternate objectives: creating a memorable narrative, or putting myself in difficult positions that I would really be challenged by to attempt and make my way out of, or acting as a catalyst to provide more fun for the other players thru my play choices.
I’m not quite there yet. I’ve got decades of experience and instincts operating the old way. But at this point I suspect it is only a matter of time that my awareness of and will for the new way surpasses my historical approach.
Somewhere up in heaven, Dad is letting his opponent win at racquetball, allowing them both to truly enjoy the experience. I hope he’s happy that his son finally internalized that lesson.
