What does it mean to win?
A contemplative blog about the question bothering us all
Every time I come home, I feel like I have stepped into an old memory of mine.
The streets look the same, the same shops selling the same food. I don’t even find it hard to navigate. It weirdly makes me happy and sad at the same time as I feel the city didn’t grow up with me while I had so many changes in my life. I feel I have just slipped into the same lifestyle that I had before leaving and nothing changes. It’s one of the most fascinating thoughts to me.
I visited Shadab to eat biryani. It was insane how it tasted exactly the same and was still the best biryani I have had. 15 years ago, my dad brought it home. 8 years ago, I shifted to Hyderabad and 3 years ago I left. Yet the smell, the taste, the cushions everything was exactly the same.
Visiting home gets me a chance to catch up with everyone. Some comment I look fatter while some notice I have a new hairstyle. However one thing that’s constant is that everyone still feels the same no matter how much they have progressed. Although the initial nervousness holds both of us back, after a while it feels that it’s the same guy only this time he is wearing chic shoes instead of torn slippers like in college. However talking to them makes you realize how similar things still are even though the metrics might have changed.
Suddenly they are now chasing cars instead of 9.0 GPAs or they are worried that they are stuck in a loop instead of being sad about getting low grades in a project. Talking to them makes me feel all of us have that small kid inside of us who just wants to be a part of a group, play with friends and make their parents proud. Meeting them is like travelling in an alternate timeline since our paths diverged after school or college and we chased different things. It just makes me wonder if I took the wrong path and choice and if I should have led the life that way they did.
What does it mean to win?
When we were younger, the answer was easy. Study hard for two years, get into a good college, and everything will work out. That’s what we were told. And since everyone around us was chasing the same goal, it felt like the only way forward.
But life didn’t stay that simple.
Now, people are on completely different journeys. Some are making big money in top companies. Others are doing master’s degrees or PhDs while carrying student loans. Some are starting families. Some are building startups. Some are planning world trips, while others are thinking of moving back home. Everyone is now scrambling to find a partner which was actively discouraged throughout our life. 
Everybody is confused. No matter what decision they take, it always feels like you are doing something wrong. You try to optimize for everything and end up failing cause you cant have it all. Even though you might be living the life you dreamt, you still feel like falling behind. That maybe they should have done things differently.
Instagram and Linkedin have made the situation far worse because everyone only sees each other’s highlights. You don’t just see one person’s win. You see five in a row. Someone’s engagement. Someone’s product launch. Someone’s promotion. Someone’s Europe trip. And without even realising it, your brain merges all of them together and compares that supercut to your one quiet life. It makes you feel like you’re losing a race you never signed up for. A win for someone might not be important for someone else.
On top of that everyone feels that life stops at 30 so all accomplishments must be done before that. In the previous generation people got married young and then built their life together. Now, we’re expected to “fix” everything about ourselves first — finances, fitness, careers, emotional wounds — and only then find someone who’s equally fixed.
There’s this idea that once we get X, our life is sorted. Over the years, I have found this to be the source of all my unhappiness. You see while this idea helps us focus and drop everything else, we forget to enjoy our own life. We justify every suffering that once we achieve X everything would be worth it. However nobody has ever felt a relief on reaching X because they are busy chasing another Y. Meanwhile, life moves on. Your parents grow older. Your health starts to shift. The habits you ignored begin to catch up. And suddenly, life becomes one long to-do list.
A win is supposed to feel like freedom. So why doesn’t it?
There’s an old Greek myth about a man named Sisyphus. He was punished by the gods for cheating death and was condemned to roll a heavy boulder up a hill, only for it to roll back down every time he reached the top. Over and over, forever. Conventional wisdom says that’s eternal suffering.
Albert Camus, a French philosopher, has this absurd idea that Sisyphus is happy. Because even in the absurdity of his fate, Sisyphus owns his struggle. He accepts that there is no final meaning, and still chooses to push the boulder.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that suffering is noble or that people in pain should just “accept it.” That would be cruel. But there is something quietly powerful in choosing to keep going, in finding purpose not in a final destination but in the act itself.
You see, life will go by and sometimes it’s going to feel great and sometimes it’s terrible. However most people often get trapped in the past or the future. The past has happened, it won’t hurt you anymore. The future will happen regardless of us worrying about it. The only thing that can change is the present. So if we don’t stay alive in the present, the regrets would just keep adding up.
Funnily enough even the great people in history also remained trapped in this. Franz Kafka, one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, died before most of his work was even published. He believed he had failed. Vincent van Gogh painted over 2,000 pieces, but sold only one painting in his entire life. He died feeling like his life had amounted to nothing.
What does it mean to win?
Perhaps to find the answer, we first need to be kind to ourselves. Maybe we should start by looking at ourselves the way we look at our best friend. Acknowledge the hardships we’ve overcome. Notice how much we’ve grown. Recognize the effort it takes just to keep moving forward every day. And most importantly, stop treating ourselves like a constant project under construction.
Virat Kohli is one of the greatest cricketers of all time. But for years, he was stuck on 70 centuries. Most players never even get close to that number, but the noise around him was loud. He admitted later that he was struggling with mental health. No matter how hard he tried, one ball would always get him out. Then came that game against Afghanistan. In his mind, he had let go. He stopped chasing the hundred. And suddenly, it happened. He hit a six, and reached century number 71, after almost three years. But instead of roaring in celebration, he laughed. In disbelief. Because at that moment, the weight lifted. That, in a career full of legendary innings, was the one that freed him. He scored 12 more centuries after that.
That’s what a win is supposed to feel like. A culmination of all the pain, the silence, the trying. Whether you get that by doing hard things, or challenging yourself or by forming connections, as long as we keep trying I feel that is a win. It may not be flashy or even noteworthy, but as long as it’s liberating, it’s a win.
In Avatar-the last airbender, Uncle Iroh asks Zuko “Who are you? And what do you want?” I think it’s worthwhile writing the answer to this every now and then. It might genuinely help us center and find what are the things we want to achieve this year. Instead of getting swayed away by instagram/linkedin posts, we should really think about what we want to get done.
Chasing X will never give us happiness, but enjoying the journey will. We need to find happiness in the chase only then will the win feel like a win. For that we need to remain in the present as much as possible.
What does it mean to win?
For me, its the moment when it works. That instant, when I forget everything else and I look at it in wonder and amazement. When I don’t care about anything else in the world and just stare at it. That’s the moment when I feel I made it. That for me is to win. That is what I keep chasing in every hard task I attempt, that feeling.
Winning is not about the world. There is no metric to define it. Sometimes it’s getting through a hard week. Sometimes it’s being honest with yourself. Sometimes it’s laughing again after a long time. And sometimes, it’s letting go of all the pressure and just playing for the love of it, like Kohli did that day.
We don’t need to chase someone else’s definition of success. We don’t need to live on timelines set by people who don’t know our story. The truth is, this is your life. You are the one who gets to write it.
Maybe Winning is just choosing to live, care and keep going on your own terms. And if you are doing that, you are already winning.
