whiner or winner – which will it be?

Ok – here’s the thing.  I am sick of people whining all the time.  It could be about the government and the lack of infrastructure and civic amenities one day, or about the state of education or maybe climate change or environment the next, or maybe it could be about the corrupting influence of ‘outside’ culture on our kids, or about globalization playing havoc with our indigenous capacities.  Or maybe it is simply about husbands or wives not being sensitive to the other’s needs.  Or whatever.  The degree of whining may be different for different people, but the overall opinion seems to be unanimous on one point – that if things continue the way they are going right now, then we are all headed for doomsday.  Well, guess what people – we all are headed for doomsday anyway – only it’s our own personal doomsday and, make no mistake, it will happen.  So it has been written and so it shall come to pass.

If that is so, the question becomes really simple – how do we want to pass the intervening time?  The way I see it, there are two options before us – we can whine and whine about things till the cows come home in the hope that someone will come along and make a difference, or we can try to make a difference ourselves and be winners in the process.

Take the example of sport – which in my mind is the best metaphor for life that we have.  It is fashionable these days to deride the commercialization of cricket, the amount of money that the players get compared to the pittance that other sports and sportsmen get.  People (including some sportsmen from these other sports) complain about the lack of support and encouragement from the government, about the lack of infrastructure and funds and about the general apathy about their sport in the minds of sports administrators.  While I don’t debate that point – after all, we all know about government apathy, don’t we – I don’t think that is the reason for their lack of success in these sports.  What stops these sportsmen from winning despite these conditions?  Long-distance runners from Kenya and Ethiopia and other impoverished African nations do not win major international marathons because they get sponsored Nike shoes – they win despite not having any shoes at all.  Winning changes everything.  Win instead of whine and the world will be at your feet, and the shoes will come.

Even in the case of cricket there was no money to begin with and many past cricketers are still living in penury.  The money started coming in after the team started winning – beginning with the ’83 WC and going on to win nearly every major competition for the next two years culminating in the famous “Champion of Champions” Audi.  Those of you who are born recently will never know the excitement we felt then – of getting up at 4.30 am to watch amazing coverage by Channel 9, where – wonder of wonders – the white ball was still clearly visible even after the shot was played, and of seeing Roger Binny take out 3 Australian batsmen before your first cup of tea was even brewed.  Still, the point is that cricket became rich only after it became so popular, and it became so popular only after the team started winning.  Why can that not happen with other sports?  Hockey, for example, is as exciting and enjoyed the same adulation in yesteryears when we were winning Olympic golds by the dozen and only started falling on hard days once we stopped winning.  The lesson is simple – everyone loves a winner and no one loves a whiner.

This whining phenomenon percolates through all our thought processes.  We expect hand-holding and mollycoddling at every stage.  We expect the government to keep the roads clean and the rivers sparkling and the air fresh, and yet we ourselves think nothing of throwing plastic garbage bags into the river from every bridge that we cross or chucking that packet of chips out of our train window the moment the chips are over.  Why?  Because it is so damn convenient.  We expect the government to improve the state of primary education and keep more kids in school, and yet we will complain about every increase in the education cess on tax.  This is not to advocate increasing taxes or government spending – rather it is the exact opposite.  The government is certainly not bathed in milk (to transliterate a popular Hindi saying) but neither are we.  We intensely scrutinize our kid’s school and teachers to make sure it has the latest and greatest teaching methods, most competitive curriculum, best teacher-student ratio and all the other facilities that go to make the modern school, so as to give our children the best of support and infrastructure to succeed – but do we even think about giving them the confidence of character and depth of heart that is essential for real success?  Do we give them freedom to make mistakes – to learn and to move on and to keep going regardless of the results?  Not by teaching it to them, but by setting an example.  Are we making them winners or whiners by being winners or whiners ourselves?

For winning finally boils down to the individual and whining can never change that – we win not because of favorable circumstances but despite unfavorable ones.  Note that I don’t mean ‘winning’ in the usual sense of ‘not losing’ – it can also be about losing with dignity and grace, if required.  It is really about the human spirit.  It is about sheer strength of will and gut-wrenching determination.  It is about playing hard but fair, and about not giving up till the fat lady* sings – no matter what the odds.  And it is about accepting the outcome, whatever it may be, and picking up and moving on.

And that’s what makes a winner – the rest are simply excuses.

- x – x -

* or “horizontally-challenged person of the female gender”, for the politically-correct

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