So yeah, while playing the game of life, we need to strike a delicate balance. Self-respect demands that we make a dedicated effort. Self-worth demands that we feel we are enough regardless of its outcome.

But we’ve forgotten it’s all a game.

Nailed it. In order for the game to do its job — to make us better people, and for us to be happy within it — we have to understand both that the game doesn’t matter, and that it matters very much, just not in the way we usually think about it.

I read an African proverb once that goes something like “the struggle belongs to us; success or failure is in the hands of the gods. Let us then embrace the struggle.” I’m not very good at that. But I do know it’s the way to behave, if I intend to be truly happy.

The point of the game is not winning, it’s improving. Therefore, that old mantra about “It’s not about who won or lost; it’s how you play the game,” which sounded so trite when I was a kid, turns out to be deeply true. But paradoxically, I will not play the game well, I will not grow as much as I could in the playing of it, if I don’t act like the winning matters. Right up to the final buzzer. Then it doesn’t matter at all.

Humaning is very hard sometimes.