Do You Win When You Win?

Stubborn-ness is genetic (and I don’t care if stubborn-ness isn’t a word). I’m positive of it even though I know nothing of my true genes. I do know, that my daughter will argue you down about whether a blue sky is really aqua until you run away yelling uncle.

And I’m pretty sure that comes from me. Except I won’t argue as long as she does. I’ll just stop talking to you until you come back and say uncle.

Damn straight. And yeah, that’s what I thought.

Sometimes though, they don’t come back and you move on to the next level of stubborn-ness which is choosing to lose something in order to win. Being satisfied that you didn’t give in under any circumstances, that in the end “I was right. I’m still right. I’ll be right forever. I’m right. I’m right. Game over, sucka…”

Except if they don’t come back, that isn’t really winning. (This is of course without taking into consideration those people that you need to tell to kick rocks.) Losing anything good, whether love, a part of yourself or just a close friend in the name of stubborn-ness can never be added into the win column. A loss is still a loss. Anything that takes away from life is losing. If I wake up with less than I had yesterday, I lost something.

So I share with you my words of motherly wisdom to my daughter: You don’t always have to be right, love.

Sometimes there is no right. Sometimes their right is not our right. Sometimes the differences between rights and wrongs are so very, very, small and the absolute most insignificant part of the relationship. Sometimes, and this is really only sometimes, you have to be wrong to win.

What really matters, is will you still be my love? Will I still be my whole self? Will you still be my friend? Will you still be that part of my life that I allowed you to be in the first place? Will I wake up tomorrow with you still in that space? Will you still…

That’s what matters.