65 Roses and a Trunki

Courts and Losses

In sickness, death and business, the biggest lesson I've learned is that victory is never more than a hiatus in a series of defeats.

In a documentary about his life and work, Leonard Cohen said he ‘found that things became a lot easier when I no longer expected to win’. Despite the obvious truth in this stoic view of the world, it's hard to let go of the illusion that a life of endless victories is worth chasing, but it's through our defeats, through not getting what we want, that we grow. In these moments, and every life has many of them, we learn what it is to be truly human and that is the greatest victory of all. I despair watching kids (and so-called grown-ups) fetishise fragments of a life on Instagram, Snapchat or Facebook and mistake the fragments for the whole. Real lives are messy and unpredictable and beautiful because of it. If we lose sight of that truth, we won't learn and we won't grow, individually or collectively.

I'd won the first battle in the Great Trunki War and if I was a Roman general riding my chariot through the streets of Rome in celebration of a glorious victory, I'd have a servant whispering in my ear: ‘Memento Mori! Memento Mori! (Remember you shall die! Remember you shall die!)’ In my case, I had my mum's voice in my ear, ‘Count your blessings because you don't know anything about tomorrow.’ That wasn't strictly true. I knew with absolute certainty that tomorrow would bring another problem to solve and then another and another. ...