What on Earth Is Winning and Losing?

“Any coward can fight a battle when he’s sure of winning; but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he’s sure of losing.”

It sounded cool. Brave. The sort of thing you nod along to at dinner parties, or underline in a book at three in the morning. But then I sat with it longer and, in my context, I realised I do not agree with it at all.

What does losing actually mean? And what does winning mean? I do not think either applies to PSP.

This is not a war. It is not a poker game. It is not a football match with a scoreboard and a final whistle. There is not one side that wins and one side that loses. If losing simply means dying, then we all lose eventually. That is not failure. It is just how life works.

So instead of thinking about winning and losing, I looked at the day I had.

I sat in the sun. I slept pretty well. I went for a lovely walk (wheel) with my family and carer. I played chess badly against my son in law but still won one game out of five. I watched my team concede late and stay near the bottom of the Premier League. I am now watching the World Snooker Championships.

Not a perfect day. But name one that ever is.

Adapting Is Not Losing

I am trialling a new microphone so I can dictate instead of type. It is already helping my writing speed and clarity far more than I expected.

That might sound like a small thing. A piece of hardware. A practical workaround. But I have been thinking about what it actually represents, and I do not think it is small at all.

Psychologists who study chronic illness have identified something that might seem obvious, but that I have learned is genuinely difficult to achieve. The people who adjust best to progressive conditions are those who remain as active as is reasonably possible, engage in self management, and focus on what remains within reach rather than what has been lost. A major review published in The Lancet put it plainly. Successful adjustment is not about fighting the illness or accepting defeat. It is about continuing to participate, continuing to contribute, and finding ways to do so that honour both who you are and what you are now able to do.

The microphone is that, exactly. Writing has always been central to how I think, how I process, how I connect with other people. PSP threatened that, and the microphone quietly gave me another way in. This is what researchers call self management, not in the bureaucratic, form filling sense, but in the deeper sense of a person who refuses to be reduced to their diagnosis. Who looks at what they can no longer do with one hand, and quietly finds another hand to do it with.

That feels like making the best of what I have. Not winning. Not losing. Adapting.

What Came Back

I was fortunate this week to receive some of the most remarkable feedback I have ever had as a writer, from fellow patients and caregivers. It truly means the world to me.

I do not mean complimentary in the polite sense, the kind of well meaning words people offer when they do not quite know what else to say. I mean genuine, reflective, deeply considered responses from people who had sat with my previous posts and written back with something of themselves. People sharing their own fears.

It made me incredibly proud, the feeling when something you wrote in private reaches someone in their private place, and they let you know.

That is what writing is for. Not for the scoreboard. Not to win anything. But to be, briefly, less alone in the things that are hardest to say. And of course, to keep myself busy and occupied in a world where watching the Snooker World Championships is not quite enough to keep me purposeful.

If these posts are doing that for even a handful of people, then I know what success looks like. It looks like this.

What Failure Looks Like, And Why I Cannot Find It

I do not know what success looks like with PSP. I genuinely do not. And I do not really know what failure looks like either. Life does not track in straight lines and none of us know how it is going to unfold.

But I do know this. You make what you may make of life.

As a person of faith, I believe I am going to a place better than where I have been, although I am still scared of what is to come. Faith does not remove fear. It simply lives alongside it. That is not weakness. It is, I think, one of the most honest things I know how to say.

I notice the PSP every day. You cannot ignore it. But maybe the mistake is treating it like an opponent that can win or lose.

For me, success is continuing to live, continuing to show up, continuing to find purpose and meaning, and making the best of what I have.

Failure? I do not know what that is in this context. Giving in would not be failure. I would call it understandable. And I would extend to anyone who has ever given in the same compassion I would want extended to me.

Eliot talks about cowardice and pluck, about winning and losing. But today, I do not feel like a coward. And I do not measure my life that way anymore.

Every day I can write, be with my family, and notice what is still good is not a win over anything. It is simply a day lived well.

I will not pretend that the wheelchair, the carer, the loss of walking, or my football team do not matter. They do. But they are not scorecards.

This is not about winning or losing.

It is about making the best of what you have.

And today, I did.