Winning by Dying

To win any battle, you must fight as if you are already dead” - Miyamoto Musashi.

How do I explain to people that this was my favourite quote as a 12 year old. I loved it so much I put the quote on the front page of most of my personal writing stationeries. Thinking back, I genuinely am not too sure I fully understood the quote. I just liked the name of the person who made the quote. It had a nice ring to it. I am pretty sure I fell in love with another new quote after a year or so but that quote has always stuck with me since then. Now, in college and older, I think I understand the quote better and realize how much of a gem it is.

The quote is counterintuitive. Dead men don’t win battles. Living men do. So why would acting like a dead man help to win? You see, a dead man has nothing to either lose or gain. The worst case scenario in a war is death. A dead man has already faced that so he has nothing to gain in that regard. The best case scenario in a war is victory. Does that really do anything for the dead man? Nope. He’s already dead. Let’s play around with maths a little. The squeeze theorem for calculating limits says that if a function y exists within the bound of two functions (b, a) with the same limit as they approach a number n, then we can say that the limit of y is equal to the same limit of b & a as they approach n. The bottom line is that since we have deduced that the dead man has nothing to gain in both the worst and best case scenario, it’s mathematically right of us to say, according to the squeeze theorem, there’s nothing to gain or lose in between as well. There’s no combination of scenarios in which the dead man loses or gains in a battle. You see why maths is nice uhn? If only this was my calc finals bruh.

Back to the topic. So, how does that make the dead man able to win? Because he has nothing to gain or lose, he just goes there and fights. He can’t die anymore so he doesn’t mind the bullets. While other “living” men are trying to be cautious, and rightly so (they have lives to protect), the dead man rushes into things headlong. He goes straight and fights. He isn’t thinking of safety first or checking to see if the enemy is coming or not. He isn’t glossing over the details. He just wants to go out and fight. There’s no lose or win scenario for him. He lives just to fight. And that is why he wins the battle. Uhm, wait a minute? He “wins”? Well, we are the ones who define it as winning. The dead man doesn’t even know any of that. He just knows he has no one to fight anymore. To him, victory means nothing. It’s just the end of his fight or battle for that period. That’s why even Jesus said, “Whosoever will save his life shall lose and whosoever shall lose his life shall save it”. In the world we live in today, it’s tough to comprehend but that’s actually how it works. You win when you die. When you die to results. When you die to winning and losing. Just like the dead man, you stop overthinking and glossing over stupid details. You get up and face whatever life has thrown at you. You just want to do what you have to do.

It’s lowkey one of the hardest things to read and comprehend. Even I myself struggle with it. This is largely due to the fact that as human beings, we need something to motivate us. “$50k? Jesus. I need to lock in to win”, “An A in that subject would lead to a good grade and maybe a 4.0. Then I have increased chances of a scholarship”. Humans are by nature beings of motivation. We very rarely do things without motivation. So, since we need one, we have to get one that’s not attached to winning or losing. Cliche but the best one is a better you to be honest. Your motivation in that subject is to understand it better and to be able to explain it to others. Your motivation for doing the competition can be to develop yourself better and become better at creating solution to problems. There’s a whole world of things you can use as motivation. It just doesn’t have to be winning. “So I shouldn’t want to win to win?” Nope. You should be dead to winning itself. You see the thing is winning would really matter if that was the end of your life and all you have to do. But it never is and it will never be (except for the Heavenly Race. don’t lose that one plz. Win and get to heaven). Every single thing is just a part of your life. It has and will never be the whole. If you won $100k in that competition, it would solve your problems but for a while. I am pretty sure you will have forgotten the victory after a year or so. What you won’t forget though is what you actually gained during that process.

“I want to win and still learn”. Aigoo. What the obsession to win does is that it clouds your emotions and blinds you from everything else. The obsession to win more often than not causes a severe case of laser focus. You have to be so lasered on that one thing and be blind to everything else. “The person who wins by doing this also learnt though?”. He wasn’t seeking to win. He happened to chance upon victory because of a combination of multiple factors that weren’t fully in his control. Just like how oxygen is a by-product of aerobic respiration, winning was a by-product, not the main product. That main product (energy) was his learning. You my dear friend on the other hand spent your entire time looking for winning. You didn’t even see anything else. Your anaerobic respiration ended up with a great amount of this really sour stuff called defeat (lactic acid) and some scraps of learning. You missed out on the good stuff.

This is just my unfiltered take on it. Life does genuinely get easier when you adopt this mindset. You cruise through life more easily and you actually end up with more wins than you would expect. And most importantly, you learn more than you could have expected.

~ unconventional thinker ~
23: 28 EST

Ps: really long essay, i know. If you managed to read it all, thanks a ton. I know i could have done a better job with length and writing but bear with me :)