F**ck Winning


I stumbled across this piece, "Fuck Winning," by Albert Burneko while skipping about the Internet (as you do) and read it, just read it.

Because yes, fuck winning, fuck the tournament system, fuck the ruthless competition/winner-takes-all/Hunger Games that is coming for us all. We don't need to beat down our kids; the world is going to do that soon enough. We don't need to teach them that only "winners" are worthwhile; that life is to be measured in trophies and salaries and prestigious job titles and tangibly shiny medals; isn't the world going to teach them all that without our help?

Here is the passage in Burneko's piece that closed my throat:  

As I write this, my two young sons are running around a grassy field where I can watch them. They have balloons stuffed under their shirts; they are crashing into each other with their big balloon-bellies and making weird monster noises and giggling so hard they can’t speak; the sun is in their hair and their eyes are bright with some anarchic Looney Tunes glee at a game that has no rules and cannot be won or lost. I want them to feel good about everything. I want to celebrate them for existing, to celebrate them for every day some absurd electrochemical miracle keeps their brave hearts beating and wards off entropy for a bit longer so they can wake up and wonder about things, to celebrate them for lighting up the world and for not having accepted its terms just yet.

Yes to this. Yes to all of this.

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