There are games that one plays and as you play you get better.
The more difficult the opponent the more you progress.
A skilled player will tax you, frustrate you and surprise you. Later you will lick your wounded pride.
Afterwards, you gain from reflections on the lessons only an expert can painfully give you. Exposure to excellence does many things.
On the one hand, it raises the bar of what is possible to heights you never knew existed.
On the other, you learn humility and the grace to lose well.
Otherwise, you may become a petty loser who blames everything and everyone for the gross injustice of not winning.
Or perhaps you settle for only ever playing those of less ability than yourself.
You become a perverted winner by fixing the game by default.
In doing so you miss out on the real lesson to be learned.
You will boast and bluster your victories to all who have the patience to listen.
But all the while a tiny inner voice will nurture self-doubt.
Losing is such a necessary part of life.
It shows you there is much to do.
To change, adapt, learn from others before the big game is up.
You have to play this game of life. Win or lose it will take place.
Your only choice is to learn from each loss or settle for pretending to be the winner you are not.
Quotes from winners from over 2000 years ago
“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”
Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome. Lived from 121-180 AD.
“Happiness and freedom begin with one principle. Some things are within your control and some are not.”
Epictetus – Stoic philosopher. Lived from 55-155 AD.
“Difficulties strengthen the mind as labour does the body.”
Seneca the Younger, Roman Stoic philosopher. Lived from 4BC-66AD.
“Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail.”
Confucius, Chinese teacher and philosopher. Lived 551-479 BC.
“Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.”
Heraclitus of Ephesus, Greek philosopher. Lived 535-475 BC.
“Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others."
Plato, Greek philosopher and mathematician. Lived approximately 428-347 BC.
“Be still my heart; thou hast known worse than this.”
Homer, Greek author of the Illiad and the Odyssey. Dates of birth and death are unknown. Lived somewhere in the range of 1102-850 BC.
I remember the furore when Bob Dylan was awarded the
Nobel Prize in literature some time ago. There was some outrage that
1) he had been
given such a prestigious award and
2) that he didn’t bother to appear in Stockholm to
accept the prize in person.
I don’t remember the details of the article I read but the
gist of it was to suggest that Bob Dylan did not deserve this award and his
disdain of the Nobel Prize Committee emphasized his being not an appropriate
person to receive it.So, it was with
some amusement I read of how popular Bob Dylan’s acceptance speech for the
Nobel prize was.
It turns out Bob Dylan wrote
a rather wonderful acceptance speech which although not given in person was
presented in Stockholm. I wasn’t surprised that the fact of this affair
different so totally from the fiction by which it was portrayed in the media.
We have become used to the dichotomy of the age we live in. Things are rarely how
they are portrayed. Strangely, Bob Dylan always managed to be himself a genuine
article. So, it’s not surprising that even in the case of this prestigious
award his words and act actions ring true to form.
I remember being shocked at one of his early
performances where he introduced an electric guitar into his act. His Folk
Festival audience hated it and viewed
it as a betrayal of everything he had produced before. He was actually booed by
a large crowd of his fans. His response was unique. He just turned his back on
the audience and continue to play. An artist that is not swayed by publicity, agents, music industry or even his fans is a unique creature indeed.I love the fact that he makes weird metal stuff
too.It pleases me no end that when he’s
not creating music or singing he likes to weld metal into amazing sculpture.
Bob Dylans metalwork
Humility is rare in an
artist. I like the fact that his song “All Along the Watchtower” which Dylan released was later covered by another singer Hendrix.Dylan announced that it was Hendrix’s version that was the definitive
one.Too few modern artists could or would
be so generous with praise.
In his acceptance speech, Dylan expresses an
appreciation for the prize he has been awarded. He comes across as self-depreciating
and admits that he had never even asked himself if his songs are literature.Here is a short quote from that Nobel prize
acceptance speech.
“If someone had ever told me that I had the slightest
chance of winning the Nobel Prize, I would have to think that I’d have about
the same odds as standing on the moon. In fact, during the year I was born and
for a few years after, there wasn’t anyone in the world who
was considered good enough to win this Nobel Prize.”
In lieu of his presence at the Nobel prize award
ceremony, the singer Patti Smith sang his song “It’s a Hard Day’s Night”.Because it was this song that someone chose to
represent his work, I wanted to take a closer look at its lyrics.I have to confess I listen to songs and rarely
hear the words. I know it is sacrilege but I tend to get caught up in the tune
and the words are sort of ‘blah blah blah’ in the background. Given this tendency, I wanted to actually print out the lyrics of this song and also give it a bit of
thought.
A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall by Bob Dylan
Oh,
where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
For some reason the song
track of Misty Mountains from Tolkien’s Book came to my mind.
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways
I think we have all
experienced those highways in our lives, places you find yourself asking how
you ever ended up here.The fact
that we sometimes don’t walk these but end up crawling them says a lot about how hard they are to navigate.
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
There are dead zones in the
sea suffering from hypoxia (low oxygen) due to excessive pollution from
man. In the 1960s ( Dylan wrote this
song in 1962) there were roughly 49 such dead zones by 2008 the number had grown
to 405.A recent publication
entitled Climate Change and Dead Zones suggests that the news could be bleaker
still as climate change could have a dramatic and worrying interaction with
dead zones (Altieri AH1, Gedan KB. 2015). Talk about your worst enemies ganging up on
you?
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall
Oh,
what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
The world has made valuable
progress under the United Nations Millenium goals to reduce deaths in under-fives. It is a real achievement that globally under-five deaths have dropped
from 12.5 million in 1990 to less than 9 million in 2008.But heart-stopping that still 25,000 under-five
year old children die every day in our world.Those wild wolves are getting past us!
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin'
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin'
This gruesome imagery conjures
up violence against other races that has blighted nations. Some musicians have been unusually effective
in drawing attention to these atrocities.
Dylan’s song ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’ focused
attention on the death of a 51-year-old black barmaid, mother of ten, who died
after being struck by the cane of a 24-year-old white customer (who was
released from prison after only six months).There have been more emotive songs like Billie Holiday's - Strange
fruit addressing these issues but it heartening to hear real musicians letting
their craft speak truth to power.
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I
saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
These lines conjured up for
me, social media, all those talkers. There are 3.48 billion social
media users in 2019,
a big multiplication from 10,000 but his observation of broken tongues nicely
predicts the misinformation that floods minds young and old around our world.
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall
And
what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin'
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
Floods were, in my mind,
somehow almost mythical events far from present life or relevance. Then in 2004 on Boxing Day, the 26th of December an Indian
Ocean tsunami killed almost a quarter of a million people and floods became
horrifically real. Japan’s tsunami in 2011
reinforced this reality.
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin'
Hunger is a blight and we
know where it is most found and how much of the populations are impacted by it.
Sub-Saharan Africa: 22.7 percent
Caribbean: 17.7 percent
Southern Asia: 14.4 percent
Southeastern Asia: 11.5 percent
Western Asia: 10.6 percent
We may not be laughing but
until we address this problem effectively we might as well be for those in this
world of ours who go hungry to bed tonight.
Heard
the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Here are some who died before
they were discovered and some examples of their words. We should celebrate their ‘songs’ and their suffering.
“As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting
itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous
coasts.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, or, the Whale
“Man cannot live without a
permanent trust in something indestructible within himself, though both that
indestructible something and his own trust in it may remain permanently
concealed from him. “
― Franz Kafka
“Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.”
― Emily Dickinson
“I don't want to throw these
characters away. In other words, I'm going to work on the book again. I haven't
been able to look at the manuscript since I got it back, but since something of
my soul is in the thing, I can't let it rot without trying.”
― John Kennedy Toole, on receiving
a rejection for his book which would, after his death, lead to him getting a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall
Oh,
who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony
I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman whose body was burning
This last line on a young woman with a burning body strikes a chord. Who would have thought
that throwing acid on young women would become so common? Thousands of women in countries such as Bangladesh,
Pakistan and India etc have had acid thrown on them in revenge attacks. These women have usually refused either
sexual advances or wedding proposals from men who feel that an acid attack on
their victims sends the message,
“If
I can’t have you no one shall!”
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded with hatred
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall
Oh,
what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one?
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin'
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
This
has echoes of the Flint water crisis in the US which began in 2014, when the drinking water
source for the city of Flint, Michigan was diverted
from Lake Huron and the Detroit River to a cheaper
source the Flint River. Because of insufficient water
treatment, lead leached from water pipes into the drinking water, exposing
over 100,000 residents to elevated lead levels.The water was coloured orange or brown, smelt strange
and caused skin rashes and hair loss.A
sip of it was said to taste as if you had a metal coin on your tongue.It took 18 months of delay and cover-up by
city, state and federal government officials before the issue was corrected.For the previous fifty years prior to 2014, the
water had been fine.In trying to save
money big mistakes were made.Lessons need to
be learned here surely?But recent
studies have shown that Flint is no aberration. In fact, it doesn't even rank
among the most dangerous lead hotspots in America. A recent study found nearly
3,000 areas in the US with recently recorded lead poisoning rates at least
double those in Flint during the peak of that city's contamination crisis. Mistakes
can be good when we learn from them but tortuous when we refuse to.
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner's face is always well-hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin'
But I'll know my song well before I start singin'
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall
This is the first time I have really read one of Bob
Dylan’s lyrics line by line and I reckon he deserves the Nobel Prize in Literature.I like this poet, I like his metal work and
most of all I love the fact that he does his art to please himself and not us.
"....singing and music are the spiritual food of the hearts and souls" Bahá'à Writings
