On Winning

Essay 47

When people tell me that I’m winning, I’ve usually just woken up, sitting in a curved ball on my sofa, in my plush grey bathrobe, drinking coffee. I see my life as a sequence of truces—I try things, fail at most things, spot the silver lining, stop to make sure, and continue my steps to where it showed up. Each next battle is fought in that thin strip of a storm thinning.

The winning is how you just keep going. I tell people my shower thoughts are awesome; my life is so that when I call one it isn’t always answered, but my emails out to many go responded. There’s a stillness to all my winning, clearly. At times it feels like I’m charging at saplings that mature jolly well all on their own, obeying much greater and more complex powers than I could ever possibly summon.

But to wait seems like a futile sport for losers. So after breakfast I resolve to garden, and every morning that inch toward the sun grows, and stands until the clouds will let light in.

To will is making sure that all one’s sprouts live, and extend upward unbothered by wars. And I touch them so I know they’re soft and active, that all the starts can carry on starting, and the fact that I can help tells me I’ve won.