Dance on Chance

If we consider success and failure (the outcome or the result) as the twin sides of a spun coin (effort behind the result), we need to consider the difference between landing headwords or tailwords as the result born of the last moment’s extra swing, spin or any other momentum or movement tilting the scale on this or the other side. Now, there can be three factors involved in this extra force deciding the winner and the loser:

1.     The coin spinner or the tosser (subject).

2.    The revolving coin itself (object): if we suppose the object to possess some vague, mysterious, inexplicable factor born of its inanimate freewill.

3.   Some abstract entity (negotiator or referee): functioning either in the form of physical or natural laws like the atmospheric elements or in the shape of supernatural laws to either act/favour on behalf /or against the subject or the object.

As per the above supposition, the success or failure in a toss of coin—or our luck or bad luck in drawing a card from a pack—becomes a very subtle and nuanced game of multitudinous factors hidden in the simple act/result of the coin landing on this or the other side.

Everybody is well aware that purely mechanical laws of physical sciences defined by the input and output process do not completely cover the range of occurrences coming across in real human lives. Human lives come across too glaring loopholes to allow the application of scientific principles to human endeavours taking them as simple inputs and outputs. Oftentimes, mountains of work irrigated with the human will power, blood and sweat do not fetch even tiny molehills. On the other hand, sometimes an anthill of an endeavour fetches the mountain of a result. This mere incongruity in the outcome validates the point of including the subtle role of the outside agents (either in the form of physical things around us or the beings, things and forces whose working laws we have not interpreted and explained so far).

The role of the ‘outside agents’ is unreasonable to the persons of logic and reasoning. They will shout, ‘It’ll leave us as mere helpless pawns shifted and shoved on the chessboard of destiny by paranormal forces.’ Let the logicians huff and puff with their explanations. The mysterious factor still haunts, and those who believe in luck, fate, destiny and the most common denominator God will continue to shine as the superbly carved beads in the same string held by the cord of belief in the supernatural. They will continue to flaunt the divinely held string till the theoreticians break it with the pull of their proven hypothesis. The onus is on the latter for their path is made of either proving or disproving. The former meanwhile is just happy in surrounding itself to the misty, hazy, cavernous pit of unexplained, inexplicable, only to be realised and felt factors.

Even if we choose a most clinically collected set of mechanical skills (standardised and equalised) and put them in competition, we still have the position of one outperforming the others, i.e., we still have a result in the form of winner and loser. So if science cannot avoid the emergence of a winner from among the set of equally equipped instruments, we have to accept the futility of classifying winner and loser. It is a very lousy shortcut to define the helpless termination of a phenomenon—a mere hypothesis such as time (Einstein said there was no real time, it is just relative realisation) that has just been coined to meet a tiny, practical end. It operates in a chosen utilitarian, abstractly chosen set of possibilities and choices, so that the one category or group of players falling into it is defined as winners; while punishing the others with the yardstick of failure. If you remove these carefully chosen set of conditions and eligibilities—that are purported to remove chaff from the grain—every endeavour becomes beyond the tortuous segments of loss and gain to become a pure work, a complete phenomenon, existing unblemishedly in the fabric of happenings.

All of us work for success. Victory is the favourite child of all endeavours in the universe. Failure is the shameful, unwanted, depraved bastard born of misfires and mis-hits accruing from some fault, either this way or the other, born of invisible or invisible factors. The role of those who genuinely took part in the race is irrelevant; the ones whose fierce competitive urgency catapulted the eventual winner to draw out the last ounce of strength to emerge victorious. When the winner hits the finishing line it is just the culmination of a phenomenon, the whole phenomenon of race. We but just pluck out the winner like we take away a ripe fruit, while putting in the dustbin of failure the crushed windfalls that lie on the ground, the unwelcomed testimony to the process of ripening when chancy windfalls saw many being dropped onto the ground. The fallen ones but become the groundwork of the victorious, the one completing the race of ripening. Unfortunately, the whole set minus the ripe and victorious is cast away as the scrap in the process of hatching a victory: the long and wordy, sweat laden steps carrying one onto the top. These are the oblations and sacrifices to the Goddess of victory. The Goddess chucks up their flesh and takes big swigs of their blood, leaving no vestiges of those struggling sinews whose failure gave us our soul-satisfying winner!

It's high time we include the losers in the over-swapping concept of victory. Like the rocket fuel burning and turning to ashes while catapulting the victorious satellite into the required orbit, the fellow competitors also fuel the race. If not for their pushing with their best competitive spirit someone would not have been driven beyond limits to achieve some victorious feat. The losers are thus contributors to someone's success. Let's change the concept to make it more humane at least!