The Winner is the Loser
My father, Mendek Rubin, repeated a small handful of phrases quite often. The meaning of some were quite clear (for example, “Be good, but if you can’t be good, be careful!”) while others still remain inscrutable to me (such as, “Don’t do things!”) Today I’m writing about one of his provocative sayings that I could never fully decipher until just a few weeks ago—“The winner is the loser, and the loser is the winner.” It happened when I lost the New York Times’ Wordle game after a long winning streak.
Every day Wordle gives you six chances to correctly guess a 5-letter word. If you fail at this, or skip a day, your winning streak score reverts to zero. After more than eight months of successful puzzle solving, my winning streak broke 250. Going a whole year without losing began to feel within my reach and became my goal. The longer my streak, the more invested in maintaining it I became.
My body was taking this game as seriously as my mind. It tensed up when my guesses proved unproductive and the threat of losing intensified. And when I did ultimately win— especially if it was a particularly challenging game—I was rewarded with a satisfying burst of feel-good hormones.
Then one day, I suddenly lost. NOOOOOO!!! The tower of triumph I’d built in my mind came crashing down. I bemoaned how long it would take to match my previous success—if ever.
What fascinates me about this experience is that while my mind was certain that I’d feel immense disappointment the following morning when my streak was back at lowly zero, what I actually felt was relief and relaxation. Playing the game without tension or the pressure to win, I enjoyed it more than I had in months. While it was still a fun challenge and winning felt good, losing no longer felt like a failure I had to strive hard to avoid.
That’s when I remembered hearing my dad say, “The winner is the loser, and the loser is winner.” For the first time, the truth of his statement became obvious. In losing, I’d won a relaxed outlook and more lighthearted joy. While caught up in winning, I was blind to the downsides of the pressure I’d added to the game—the many ways that I was actually “losing” while the metrics said I was winning.
Myra’s father, Mendek Rubin, circa 1994
In our culture, we’ve been overly socialized to prioritize victory and dread failure. My father believed that so many of us endure constant stress and insecurity as we strive for outer success to prove that we are worthy of love, respect, and belonging. To him, true winning is about fostering a free and joyful inner life where our confidence is based on unconditional self-love.
