Sometimes When You Win You Lose

The few readers who truly know me understand that while I take certain liberties with my stories there are some things that I don't exaggerate. I don't fear confrontation and rarely back down. In a disagreement I am more than a handful and I prefer not to be involved in stupid disagreements.

If arguing with a fool means that you are an idiot than I have earned the title of "stupid idiot" because I have wasted more than a few words and minutes in disagreements with fools. Fortunately age and life experience have helped to educate me so that I find myself in such foolish predicaments far less frequently than ever before.

Most of the time I try very hard to avoid engaging in such silly situations. I have nothing to prove and no reason to waste my energy dealing with those people that create disharmony in my life. But sometimes I find myself drawn into it and forced to remind myself that sometimes when you win you still lose.

Such was the situation I found myself in this afternoon. Stuck between a rock and a hard place I responded to the intentional provocation that was thrust upon me. My response leapfrogged ugly and went straightnow  to nasty. It is not something that I am proud of. And though I had made it eminently clear that if this disagreement ever came about it would flow as it did I am still disappointed.

What have I gained from it? Not much, if anything. If it were a prizefight you would have seen the judges announce my name as the victor by knockout. It wasn't even close and it probably never should have happened.

And now to quote my grandfather (may he rest in peace) I'll play out the hand using the cards I was dealt. Only time will tell if this disagreement was truly worth engaging in or if it was something other than that.

The only upside to it was that it provided a great lesson for my children, especially my son. He didn't see it and knows nothing about it, but it was the source of my thought that sometimes when you win you lose. So I'll keep my fingers crossed that if nothing else he learned something from our conversation.

That wouldn't fix everything, but it would be a bit of a mitigating factor. But for now we shall just wait and see.