I’m Giving Up the Word “Loser.” Here’s Why.
And You’re Welcome to Join My 30-Day Challenge.
Sometimes while writing a comment on someone else’s Medium article I realize I’m writing a Medium article. So it is here. K. M. Lang’s wonderful, loving — and ironically titled — article about Biscuit, her beloved “born loser” of a dog, got me thinking.
“Loser!”
The L-bomb.
So-called conservatives get liberal with the L-bomb, but so-called liberals aren’t conservative with it either. Nobody bats an eye when first graders call each other “losers” on the playground. Grownups join in.
Billionaires drop L-bombs but so do do folks living on sidewalks. Fortune 500 CEOs and high-power attorneys drop L-bombs in staff meetings. Middle managers, journalists, baristas and folks in unemployment lines do it too, and we all nod along. Grandparents drop L-bombs at the dinner table. Elder statesmen drop the bomb from the world stage.
I’ve dropped it. I probably dropped it most around middle school, when it began to dawn on me that behaving like everyone else on the playground–and not failing at it–was a matter of survival.
What does it say about us that we drop the L-bomb so unreservedly, so easily, so unquestioningly? What does it suggest we think life is and what it ought to be when we say losing isn’t something we all do on occasion, but what someone is? What does it suggest about who we think we get to be, who we’re willing to let others be, and who and what we are?
If you were a paid door-knocker for the Ron DeSantis US Presidential campaign, and you’d knocked on my door early 2024, I’d have hit you with uncomfortable words. But I refuse to call you a “loser.”
This recent Politico opinion piece heralding the end of DeSantis’s 2024 Presidential Campaign does just that though:
If you ever believed that it was possible to affect the trajectory of a presidential campaign with underemployed losers going door to door in between puffs of strawberry-flavored vapes, you are vaping an intoxicant yourself.
This… gem… was written by a pair of 70+ year-old veteran campaign strategists from both parties who’ve put presidents in the White House. If they’re not grownups nobody’s a grownup, and that makes me feel…
Well..
I really don’t want to vomit up how I feel when I see wildly successful 70-year-olds picking on passionate college students and single moms for laughs. Even when those college students and single moms embrace ideologies I abhor.
The authors’ insult adds nothing to their article. It would have been “funnier,” maybe even genuinely funny without it. Did they just want to get in a dig? Well anyway even the Politico editors let it pass. If the lead editor of Politico isn’t a grownup, nobody is.
When we uncritically drop the L-bomb, we presence an ideology.
Put “born” before your L-bomb, and you take that ideology to its logical end.
How should a “born loser” feel about themselves? Why would we want a “born loser” to feel that way? What do we get out of anyone feeling that way? When we say someone was “born to lose,” what are we saying their existence is for?
We’re all for people having self-esteem, right? We are all in for world peace and harmony, right? We do know that treating humans with dignity is lot more likely to get us there, right?
ENOUGH!
Normally this is where I go full deconstruction, but today I want to try something new.
Wanna join me in an experiment? Maybe a little social engineering? As the saying goes, movements begin with being the change we want to see.
I’m striking “loser” from my vocabulary for the next 30 days.
I invite you to join me in the challenge.
I even invite you to share the challenge if you’re so moved.
Feel free to use the comments to talk about how it goes, what fears and difficulties arise, what you discover, and anything else about the experiment and your experience you find relevant.
What happens if you totally blow the challenge?
You can rest easy.
Nobody here is going to call you a loser.
Let’s do this.
And a final note: I did blow off my contract work to write this today. I can’t keep doing this, LOL! So… if you’re moved and able, please do send me a tip. Thanks & Love!
