I have never been one of those smiley-faced individuals who always have to be on the winning side. It’s even got me into trouble when I was a Director of Corporate Communications for a computer software company. I always saw things from both sides, unlike those corporate marionettes who advertise “ask your doctor” pharmaceuticals on television.

It’s probably due to my Hungarian ancestry. Hungary was on one of the two main invasion paths from Asia into Europe (the other being Poland). I have perhaps an ancestral memory that pretending to have happy thoughts will not prevent Attila and Genghis Khan from their accustomed pattern of rapine, looting, and murder.

Winning is nice when it happens, but it’s not a permanent condition. After all, we all will eventually sicken and die. If you live long enough, your skin will resemble the craters of the moon; and your days will be accompanied by bouts of pain and even suffering. Oh, and you can forget right off about drawing admiring glances from hot young women. Unless you pay them well.

So if your days, like mine, are a strange mix of winning and losing, you can find some fleeting happiness in small pleasures. In my retirement years, I feel gratified in not having to spend 40+ hours a week dancing to the tune of some megalomaniacal boss, of which I have had several. I read books; I cook; I do chess problems; I travel when I can. Maybe that’s as close to winning as one can get in this life.