On a dogwalk today I talked to the wife about how my family's insane competitive spirit basically cured me of finding any joy or really anything good in winning, in wanting to win, in competing at all.
My mother, who believed that boys were basically stupid creatures driven by the most base instincts, & who also believed women were superior but flawed because they couldn't get along (or outright despised one another), & who therefore believed women
let boys ostensibly run the world because it kept them busy & let women have time to themselves, she favored her sons over her daughters. She thought her daughters were inherently better & would get by with a minimal amount of attention. Her sons, however, were weak, inept creatures who need constant attention, much of which (in her mind) was keeping them away from danger. She made me & my four brothers into consummate cowards by teaching us to fear & avoid conflict. But!
She also wanted us to believe we were special. She found a way to make each of us believe that we were her favorite - & not only that, that were somehow better than the others. I can't say any of this was a conscious decision - my own sense is that she learned almost all of this from her mother - but what ended up happening was that my brothers & I began to see ourselves as rivals for her attention & affection. For my mother, having five boys fighting over her must have been quite a thrill. For us, it absolutely destroyed any brotherly feelings we might have for one another - after all, who feels sympathy, empathy, or affection for his antagonist?
For a kid growing up in this milieu - I was the fourth of five children, & my oldest brother was nearly eighteen years older than I was - it led to things I found quite baffling. I remember playing tennis with my brother Steve, who is eleven years older than I am, when I was just a kid. I was either in the last years of elementary school or the first years of middle school - let's just say I was eleven. That meant he was twenty-two. He was a grown man, naturally better at any sport than I was, & yet he absolutely destroyed me on the tennis court. His taunting & his aggressive playing reduced me to tears. He was however full of joy & triumph. An outsider might judge it one of the happiest moments of his life.
The idea of simply batting a tennis ball around with his much younger brother would never have occurred to him.
Here's another example, with my little brother, who is a year younger than I am. We lived in apartments & at one point, he & I were the oldest children there. One autumn afternoon found us playing a game of football on the lawn of a nearby church. I was probably 13, my brother Chris was 12. Most of the other kids were 10 or younger. I wasn't in any way athletic (I never have been) but I was bigger than Chris & able to tackle him. He found this intolerable, & got the kids to complain I was "too big" to play. That it was "unfair." They basically refused to play unless I quit. As I walked away in a huff, I noticed my brother was now unstoppable, & he ran circles around the other kids.
In both these cases, it's important to note it wasn't a simple game being played; it was a contest, one in which the victor had to be the kind of superior being my mother told us we were. Cheating & humiliation were never off the table, because winning was everything.
Of course my brothers would disagree completely with this. But I would point out that most of them never really achieved any real status or lofty goals in life, with the possible exception of reproducing, & their children seem to be fond of them. But for people who have toiled their entire lives in mostly low-paying jobs, with broken relationships & marriages, with all of them having to return home to live with my mother when life laid them low - they have extraordinary self-esteem. It's almost supernatural.
It probably seems self-serving to say that somehow I broke the spell. It was a gradual process, & it involved many experiences, including terrible encounters with competition in school which I found just painful. Perhaps because I did have outside validation, aside from my mother - I did very well, grade-wise, & my brothers did not (two of them dropped out) - I could look into my family situation from a unique perspective. But I would recognize in the greedy, desperate way people wanted to win in school functions - from spelling bees to a college-bowl-like group I was in in high school - the same demeanor I saw in my brothers. & I didn't like it & I want any of that.
Honestly, I don't like the person it turns me into. Because I know that feeling's in me.
To bring this back to my wife: we used to have friends over for game night. I found it nice to have people over but my wife was a terrible loser & an even worse winner. She claims much of it was bravado, & maybe it was, but it reminded me too much of my childhood. I don't do game night or play games like that anymore. The few online games I played, I refuse to play with other people, preferring to play the game's AI. It is a wound my mother left me that just doesn't heal.
So in some ways for me to do a radio show about victory, which is this week's theme, is silly - I don't have any interest in victory. To my brothers, I am the consummate loser - & certainly luckier than most losers they've known. Which makes what I've lived a lifetime of losing. & I have no problem whatsoever with that.
