Victory is supposed to feel sweet. Look at a winning Super Bowl or World Series team, right after the final play seals their victory. They scream, yell, punch the air, jump up and down, and tumble over each other with whoops and cheers of uncontainable joy. That’s the feeling we expect victory to create.
But it doesn’t always feel like that. One of my coaching clients, after finally getting a promotion she’d been working to get for years (and should have gotten years earlier), said although she was initially elated at the news, that feeling was quickly replaced by a pervasive and unexplainable feeling of exhaustion. Exhaustion that lingered into the next week, and the next. Was there something wrong with her?
No, I told her. She was simply feeling what every person feels whose victory has come not on a level playing field of physical challenge or sport, but against obstacles, headwinds, or any kind of injustice they never should have had to face in the first place.
Making our way through the messy and complex world of human ambition, emotions, biases, prejudices, flaws, fears, insecurities, and social/cultural power politics is challenging. It’s why so many people find refuge in the far simpler challenge of physical adventure. A mountain doesn’t backstab you, ignore your talents, claim credit for what you’ve done, or hold you back because it doesn’t think people who look like you, or come from your background, should be climbing it. The challenge it presents is hard but straightforward. So if you win, it’s a clean and untarnished win. The kind that elicits joy.
Victories in the human realm aren’t always that pure. And victories that involve overcoming obstacles that aren’t universal—that exist because of inequity or injustice—are tinged with the bitterness of knowing the fight was inherently unfair. The victory shouldn’t have had to be won; the fight shouldn’t have had to be fought. And unless the victory includes significant systemic or institutional change, the win is also tempered by the knowledge that the underlying problems that forced us to expend all that energy are still there. The unfairness isn’t vanquished; more battles lie ahead. So instead of joy, we end up feeling 2 parts vindicated and 8 parts exhausted.
My mom, who worked to right all kinds of wrongs in the world, from environmental pollution and the destruction of neighborhoods to school segregation and housing discrimination, never threw a party when she won a big battle or overcame overwhelming odds against her. She’d smile, hug the people who’d worked with her, and then come home and sleep for three days.
Again, this is why people gravitate far more often to the kind of victories offered by sports, fix-it projects, garden renovation, or any kind of physical challenge or adventure. They offer a clear challenge, a straightforward task, and a clear endpoint we can rejoice upon reaching. But if we want to be our true and best selves in the world, achieve dreams that require access to opportunities or spaces that others aren’t necessarily inclined to grant us, or effect meaningful change in the world, sometimes we need to take on those harder battles.
So the question then becomes: how do we combat that feeling of exhaustion? How do we take on those fights without completely depleting ourselves in the process?
Everyone has their own way of replenishing personal energy: being in nature, retreating to private spaces that comfort us, unplugging devices for a period of time, or even taking on one of those physical challenges or adventures. But the sagest, wisest advice I’ve gotten … from all kinds of impressive women and minorities who’ve taken on tough but important challenges and battles in the world … including my mom … is to look for others who understand and can empathize, console, comfort, or even fight alongside you. There’s a great poem called “The Low Road” by Marge Piercy that talks about the power of that kind of community. That alone, you can fight, but they roll over you. But that two people can keep each other sane, three are a wedge, four can start an organization, six can hold a fundraising party, and so on. It’s worth listening to, or reading.
The point is, it’s the feeling of being alone against the world that’s most exhausting. If we can find people to laugh with us, cry with us, work with us and even stand with us, we have a team; a cheering squad to help us stay strong, endure the losses and, most importantly, celebrate the wins. Even if … or maybe especially if … it shouldn’t have been that hard. (Note: to hear Marge Piercy recite her poem “The Low Road,” in the above link, scroll down to the bottom of her web page. It’s the last poem listed.)
