How To Tell If You Are Winning

Think of life as a game. Are you winning or are you losing? What's the score? Are you ahead in the game or behind? How can you even tell what the score is if you don't even know the rules?

Well, maybe after reading this, How To Tell If You Are Winning Or Losing, this story will help shed some light to make you determine if you are winning or losing in the game of life.

If you are ahead, who is it you are competing against? Think about it. Who is your competition? Are you playing against all others or just yourself?

If you are behind, will you ever catch up? Does it matter if you do or if you don't? Does it matter if you just don't care?

Do you even know what the prize is if you win? Do you care? I know, like me, you just want to play the game and if you die...fade to black...game over. Is that all there is?

Or is it game over when you die. Do we live in another parallel dimension as some scientists now believe? That was one of Einstein theories so long ago. Can you imagine being that smart to think of that back then? I can't imagine. He saw things we are still trying to figure out and to prove or disprove.

What do you think? Is it game over when we die? We don't know. No one knows. Those who have died have not returned to tell us.

I hope it isn't over. It'd be nice if we all went to Heaven or even to Hell. At least, wherever we were, we'd continue the game.

There are different yet obvious ways for people to determine if they are winning in their game of life. There are those who believe that if they have food to eat and a place to sleep, then are happy and, in essence, they are winning. I feed the homeless one day a week, Sundays, and I see the joy that I bring to them by dishing them out a plate of food. Only, they don't realize that they give me so much more than I can possibly give back to them just by offering them my time and my money.

1. Money. Too many feel that without money you are a loser. Conversely, too many feel that with money you are a winner. What do you think?

With the premise of believing that having more money will make you a winner, think of all the winners who had lots of money and who are no longer here to enjoy their victory and their money. When you think about it, they were losers. Much like Elton John's "candle in the wind," many celebrities who died of drug overdoses come to mind.

2. Longevity. If you live to be 100-years-old, does that make you a winner or does that make you the same person you were before only older, a lot older. Yeah, it would suck to die in childbirth or at a young age without ever having a chance at life. Still, I don't think of those people as losers. I just think of them as dead.

Still, would you want to live that long to one hundred if you were unhealthy? Would you want to outlive all your friends and relatives?

I've known people who have died at a young age who have lived more life than I can live in two lifetimes. Conversely, I have known elderly people who have died kicking and screaming and who didn't want to let go. That's sad.

3. Happiness. Surely, if you are happy, irregardless of your economic standings and/or age, you are a winner. Right? Definitely, I'd rather be happy than rich and happy than old. Yet, if I had a choice, I'd rather be young, rich, and happy. Only, those options don't appear on anyone's menu at the drive up window of life.

"Give me an order of youth and wealth with a side of happiness, please."

"Do you want fries with that?"

4. Health. You'd be a winner if you were healthy. Just ask Lance Armstrong. He was at death's door without hope. Now, look at him. He's an inspiration to us all. I sometimes wear his wristband to motivate me to do more. He ran the Boston Marathon this year. My daughter, one of the race officials, took his photo.

I'm healthy have always been healthy. Jack LaLanne and Arnold Schwarzenegger are my idols. Both are healthy, but in different ways. I exercise and watch what I eat. Yet, I have too many friends who drink, smoke, overeat and drive to the corner mailbox instead of walking.

Then, again, there are lots of unhealthy people. As we all know, you don't have to be elderly to be unhealthy. Just look around you. Some people never had a chance to enjoy the gift of health.

Many years ago, I was privileged to make the acquaintance of a young woman in a wheelchair. She had a fatal, muscular disease and her body never fully developed, but her mind did. She graduated from Emerson College, a great school on Beacon Street in Boston, Massachusetts, and everyone was so proud of her accomplishment, only she died shortly thereafter. So sad to be that smart, that focused, that determined, and yet so unhealthy.

Was she a winner or a loser? What's your take on that? If you asked her, she'd say she was a winner. I'd say she was a winner, too. Even though she faced so many odds to fail and even though she was keenly aware of the inevitable, she inspired me, as well as others, to persevere and I'm a better person for meeting her.

I went to school with a girl who was smart and pretty. She was even a great singer. She sang at all the school recitals. She was a great person, too, and everyone who knew her loved her. Just out of college, she died of a brain hemorrhage while honeymooning in Bermuda at the age of 22-years-old.

Just as you never know when it's your turn to go, there's nothing fair about life. Are you ready to die? What haven't you done that you would do now if you knew you were going to die?

Me? I'd apologize for all my bad thoughts, bad deeds, and for lending too much time and importance to nonsense and not concentrating on the things that are important. What's important to you?

5. Brains. Look at Professor Stephen Hawkings, mister Black Hole himself. He's wicked smart, a genius. Only, he has ALS disease and is confined to a wheelchair. Would you rather be him than you? Would you want to be that smart, yet so unhealthy? What's your threshold for a tradeoff, such as that, big brains for poor health?

There are those who think that you are a winner if you have more brains than the next guy. Well, I'm here to tell you that brains and commonsense don't always go hand in hand. I know lots of smart people who lacked commonsense and are dead and lots of not so smart people with an abundance of commonsense that are still alive, vice versa, too.

Yeah, being smart is important. For me, brains are attractive. I have lots of smart friends and tend to surround myself with smart people. Only, I wouldn't want to be too smart, just smart enough. How smart is smart enough and how smart is too smart?

My girlfriend is wicked smart. First of all, she's with me. Now, that's smart. Seriously, she has an IQ of 163. She's smarter than I am. I call her Spock from Star Trek fame because she is more logical than she is emotional.

Only, what she has over me in brain power, she lacks in commonsense. I mean, I'm no dummy and when tested my IQ was 127, better than the average of 95 to 105, but certainly it pails in comparison to my girlfriend's brains. Yet, sometimes, she says and does some pretty dumb things for someone who is so smart.

Her friend, Michelle, is equally as smart. A college professor in statistical math or physics or whatever it is that is beyond my scope of comprehension, you don't want to be in the same room when these two geniuses are talking about math and logic. Thank God the Red Sox and Celtic games are televised.

Yet, I have street smarts. I grew up as a tough city kid who turned his life around. I've seen some things. You'd have to go a long way to pull the wool over my eyes, although I did buy that piece of swamp property in Florida. It is close to Disney World, though, and solid enough for a lawn chair. Hey, I'm happy.

6. Relationships. Some people feel that if they are surrounded by those who love them and those who they love, they are blessed. Of course, having friends is an important part of that, which is why those movies The Wizard of Oz with Judy Garland and It's A Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed, are so hugely popular even after all these years.

Mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, grandmothers, grandfathers, and in-laws, family holds us together. It's nice sitting around the table during the holidays reminiscing about how things were back then. Then, again, it is fun writing all those incest stories, too, but that's another topic altogether.

7. Is God the answer? I've never met an unhappy or an unfulfilled monk, have you? Yet, it'd be hard for me to perceive my life as full by sitting alone on a mountaintop all day contemplating the life that I wasn't living. I could never hide myself away in a monastery. I much equate their life to prison. Yet, I'd be wrong to believe their rejection of my life is their prison. If I had to walk in their shoes and if I switched my life with theirs, it may open my eyes to new possibilities. Conceivably, I'd look good sporting a beard, wearing a long robe, and walking in sandals.

"Peace be with you, my Son."

Yet, to each their own, which is what life is all about.

8. Children. My daughters are my life. I can't imagine my life without them in it. And I hope to God that they survive me. I never want to see any harm come to them.

I once knew a man who lost his 8-year-old daughter. How awful. I can't imagine what he felt and my heart went out to him, so much so that I helped him start a foundation in her name. She was truly beautiful inside and out. If there is any truth to the truism that the good die young, then God took a good one when he took her.

So, however you measure your life's successes or defeats, just the fact that we are all still here playing the game says a lot. We all need to live a part of our life as if today is our last day, because it could very well be that.

I think of those who never had the chance to play. I think of those who weren't given all that I was given. Then, I think of someone like Bill Gates who has the curse of all that money, that poor man. There before God go I.

"Bill, if you are reading this, allow me to shoulder some of your burden of that enormous wealth for you. I'm here for you, buddy. Give me a billion or two. Really, I don't mind. That's the kind of guy that I am. I'm ready to help you out, a stranger in your time of need that needs a helping hand."

Shh, don't say anything, but I'm kind of hoping that Bill is so wicked smart that he doesn't have commonsense enough to see my ruse.

"As I was saying Bill, let me carry that big, bag of cash for you. It looks really heavy."