Losing

Losing

Like many of my friends, I cared deeply about who won the 2024 Stanley Cup.

I wasn’t a great fan of either team in the finals and it has been many years since I have watched a full hockey game. But as a Canadian of a certain age, hockey is in my blood.

Some of my earliest memories are of lying in bed listening to my father and grandfather watching the Toronto Maple Leafs play. In those years they were a fabulous team that won more often than they lost. By osmosis my brothers and I all became Toronto fans.

This year Toronto continued its long tradition of disappointment and by the second round of the playoffs there was no one left for me to seriously cheer for.

But something happened in the finals. It was hard not to root for a Canadian team coming back from losing three consecutive games in the finals. The series changed from one that most people didn’t care about to an important event in Canadian lives.

I didn’t watch the last game, couldn’t stand the stress of it, but I did get up in the middle of the night to check the score. When I found that Edmonton had lost, I was devastated.

I’m not sure why this loss hit me so hard. Sure, it’s been thirty years since a Canadian team won the cup, but I’ve never considered myself particularly patriotic. Maybe I just don’t like the idea of Americans gloating over being better than us at our game. But the only thing American about the Florida team was where they are based out of. The Panthers have two Americans and thirteen Canadians playing for them.

So why do we get upset when we lose? Why do we consider it important when we lose at something as trivial as a game we aren’t even playing?

Everyone goes through losses in their lives. There are important ones like the death of family members. The loss of friends and even pets can result in heart wrenching grief.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember how insignificant some of the losses we suffer really are.

It is possible to look at a writing life as a continuum of wins and losses.

We sit down to write and have days when the words slip easily onto the page. Other days nothing comes. Sometimes we win and sometimes we lose.

Once a book or story is written, we send it out into the world to see how people react. The reaction of friends, readers and critics will be positive or negative. We seem to see the world in a binary way and don’t often admit that reactions to our work are neutral. It is in our nature to see a response that isn’t glowing as negative

If we are lucky enough to have our books nominated for awards, we set ourselves up for another win-lose situation. It’s wonderful to win but being nominated and not winning can feel even worse than never being considered.

In the end, it isn’t much help to worry about losing. When a favoured sports team almost wins everything, there is no real effect on our lives.

Winning positive reviews and literary prizes may be a little more important, but the truth is that all the accolades are to some extent artificial. When we win, it means a specific person of group of people liked our book. When we lose, they may have loved our work but liked something about another book just a little bit more.

Losing may mean a few less books are sold, but it doesn’t make us worse people or inferior writers.