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David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

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My need to win isn’t always pretty, but it’s key to who I’ve always been

By David McElroy · May 22, 2018

When it came to the desire to win, I could be obnoxious when I was a child. It’s not that I rubbed it in when I won or was a bad loser when I lost. It’s simply that I was very, very intense when I was competing — no matter how small the stakes were.

When I was in the fifth grade, we had a running team competition in a math class. We had four teams and each team had a captain. Three fourths of the class seemed to be divided randomly, but one of the teams had all the worst students in the room — and I was their captain.

For months, we would have one period each week when the teams worked together. The team captains were expected to take the lead. I was furious at being saddled with the weakest students in class, but I pushed and pushed them during those work sessions. I didn’t care whether they said they didn’t understand the work. I was going to make them understand. I wanted to win.

After several months of practice and then regular matches against each other, my team was the only one that never lost a match. The worst students — those on my team — finally understood their worst subject, because I refused to let us lose. I forced them to learn. Toward the end of the year, the teacher privately confessed to me that she did it on purpose — because she knew I was competitive enough to force my peers to learn.

I love to win and I hate to lose.

Those are two entirely different things, but they’re both true for me. I’ve always been driven to win — and I’ve always been furious with the prospect of losing.

The angry and driven side of me is something which I don’t always like to show. I don’t always like that part of me, because it can seem ugly and crass. To mention a ridiculous example, I hate the person I can become when I drive.

The other drivers are idiots. They don’t know how to drive. They’re in my way — especially if they’re in the left lane. If I had hood-mounted machine guns, I’d mow them all down.

After I’m finished driving — at times when I’ve been angry at other drivers — I realize how ridiculous I’ve been and I’m embarrassed at how I’ve felt.

When I worked in politics, I was very driven to win. Yes, I wanted to make money from the campaigns. Yes, I was a mercenary working for whoever hired me. But I had a deep and vicious desire to win.

I needed to win.

Very few feelings I’ve ever experienced are as satisfying as the feeling of having beaten an opponent — especially when we weren’t supposed to win. It was exhilarating. It was emotional. It felt primal.

I found myself thinking today that there aren’t enough places in modern society where this primal desire to win is considered acceptable. We’re all supposed to be cooperative or collaborative or whatever the latest buzzwords are. It’s considered old-fashioned and maybe a bit brutal to want to line up and simply destroy someone — in whatever way is acceptable in the game at hand.

If I had lived in a less-civilized time, I strongly suspect I would have become a military leader. If I had lived in a day when conquest and killing were considered proper and virtuous, I would have been very good at it.

Today, those characteristics aren’t welcome in many places. They’re acceptable in some sports. (Although I was never a great racquetball player, I was a vicious player. I hurt myself and broke racquets because I was too willing to sacrifice myself for points.) Those characteristics are also acceptable in some business settings, but even there, it’s not entirely acceptable to openly want to crush the competition.

(My business heroes have been the mavericks who went up against impossible odds and stormed the castle of entrenched competition — and somehow won. One of my favorite books is still “The Corporate Warriors,” which is a collection of stories about half a dozen men who have done this.)

I was thinking today about how two parts of my personality sometimes seem to be competing for control of who I am. One is kind and loving and empathetic. The other is vicious and brutal and competitive. I sometimes find myself thinking of the competitive part of me as the bad part.

But I couldn’t be who I am without that part. I couldn’t have done many of the things I’ve done in the past — and without that part, I’d have no chance of doing the things I want to do in the future.

Have you ever watched an episode of the original Star Trek series called “The Enemy Within”? Due to a transporter malfunction, Capt. Kirk is split into two different people — one with all of his good qualities and another with all of his lurking inner evil.

As the episode goes along, you quickly think that Good Kirk needs to kill Evil Kirk. The evil person is doing terrible things. He even tries to force himself on Yeoman Janice Rand. But toward the end, we learn that Good Kirk can’t be what he has to be — a strong, decisive captain who makes quick, necessary decisions that sometimes hurt people — if he doesn’t have those “evil” traits inside.

Kirk learned that the evil inside him had to be brought back into him — for him to find a balance. For him to learn how to be the good and loving person he normally needed to be — but for those more base instincts to be there when he needed to fight and win.

As I thought about this today, I realized that I need my vicious and passionate side just as much as I need the more loving side. I truly want to be a loving and decent person. That’s who I choose to be.

But on the inside, there’s someone else — someone I don’t choose to allow to control me — someone who can fight and destroy and win.

I sometimes fear that part of myself, because I don’t want to be angry and I don’t want to hurt anyone. But I have to accept that part of me — and keep it under control for the right times — if I want to do the things that matter to me.

That little boy of my youth was driven to win. He was proud of winning. The teen version of me could be calculating and manipulative. He won almost every time he played any game.

The more mature adult version of me wants to be kind and loving and decent. Those are choices and I approve of those choices — but there are times when the competitive and savage primal instinct has to come out.

I live halfway between arrogant confidence and crippling self-doubt — and there are times when each of those extremes serves my needs. It can allow me to be cautious and humble at times, and that can be a good thing.

But I need to use that primal and confident passion that’s inside me, too, because I still want to win in everything I do.

I need to win.

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This was the Monday evening sunset. While I was wa This was the Monday evening sunset. While I was waiting for the right color and light, a swarm of gnats descended on my car. It was like the Hitchcock film “The Birds,” except they were gnats. So I got out of there before things could get ugly. 😺 #nature #naturephotography #sky #colorful #clouds #sunset #birmingham #alabama
I normally get home by the quickest path that will I normally get home by the quickest path that will take me there, but I wasn’t in the mood today to deal with lots of other drivers. So I skipped I-459 and went across the slower two-lane route of Alabama 119. The drive didn’t cure me of all that ails me, but it was a more pleasant and humane experience, at least for me. #nature #naturephotography #trees #countryroad #birmingham #alabama
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I caught the last little bit of light Saturday eve I caught the last little bit of light Saturday even just after the sun had gone beneath the horizon. When you watch something such as this, it’s easy to understand why early humans assumed that the sun revolved around us instead of the other way around. #nature #naturephotography #sky #colorful #clouds #sunset #birmingham #alabama
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For “throwback Thursday, let me introduce you to For “throwback Thursday, let me introduce you to Sam. In 2009, I took in a young feral cat who I named for the early American revolutionary Samuel Adams. He was one of the most confident — downright arrogant, in fact — cats I’ve ever been around. He had an amazing personality and I immediately loved him. He was no more than 8 or 9 months old when he suddenly died for reasons that my vet couldn’t explain. Even though I had him only a short time, he was one of my all-time favorites. #tbt #cats #tabby #feral #birmingham #alabama
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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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