2009/08/08 New York
Professional
A wise man
A while ago a friend sent me an e-mail. “Somebody called me a professional loser,” he wrote.
“Who is this person?” I asked.
My friend answered: “A wise man. I'm paying this man to talk to me.”
“You mean a psychoanalyst?” I asked.
“Yes,” my friend answered.
“Listen,” I wrote back, “the most important word in this sentence is ‘professional’. You are a professional; you know what you are doing. You are much more than the average loser. Losing is what you are good at. You should concentrate on the word ‘professional’.”
Last night I had dinner with my friend and his girlfriend.
He stopped seeing his psychoanalyst. But he still calls himself “a professional loser”.
He doesn’t have a house anymore and he told me about a nightmare he had the other night. In this nightmare my friend was 40. He said: “It was such a relief that after waking up I realized that I was still 39. Two more months and then I’m 40.”
He is one of the most charming men I’ve ever met. I consider hiring him, but I’m afraid I cannot afford paying him.
He is now thinking of becoming a teacher. His girlfriend said: “You cannot teach. You're good for nothing.”
But I would say that the art of losing is an important art.
12 comments
Maybe he believes being good at something is vulgar.
He should become a jew and start a comedy-profession. There's nothing funnier than a jewish, professional loser (I love'm to pieces)
wonderful story..
They say it's a blessing to embrace your inner loser, but now I'm confused. Should we leave it to the professionals?
Arnon
I think of my self as a master in losing. I cherise that thought very much and you are right it's an art.
Are you surrounded by professional losers?
I would be interested in what his psychoanalyst meant by using the word "professional". Did he mean your friend loses deliberately? In this case I'd see it as a common strategy of self protection. It's easier to inflict pain, disappointment and so forth upon oneself than letting it hit you square in the face. Nothing to be excessively proud of but, yes, quite amusing to watch at times.
Hire
What would you hire him for?
His shrink has a problem with projection.
Hordijk
To be my personal professional loser; he should tell people: “I’m Mr. Grunberg’s personal professional loser. Shall I acquaint you with the art of losing?”
A good choice: a professional loser is very important next to a professional winner. You cannot have one without the other.
I guess there are only two types of people, professional losers and ordinary ones. At least he is honest about it.
Outsourcing
Does that mean you also would consider outsourcing loosing? Wouldn't that contain the same fallacy that the 'method Grunberg' for 'just enough suffering' you describe in 'the technique of suffering' contains? That if there can't be lost anything, there can't be hapiness? And would you say, that since this person is a professional in loosing, he's probably very good at the method Grunberg, and that's his biggest loss of all?
Hordijk
Outsourcing suffering is a religious idea (isn’t Christianity about outsourcing suffering?) and I don’t believe that you can outsource losing, or perhaps well, one might argue that winning is just outsourcing losing. All I thought is that after the personal shopper it’s time for the personal loser.
