The Crudeness of Consolation (Prizes)

Growing older, and not up, is great till the time you’re winning, and not being a runner up. Because, since the history of time, it’s only winners who have survived — if you believe in uncle Darwin’s tales.

Speaking of Darwin, evolution, however, may have exited the building along with its chum common sense, as soon as consolation prizes made a grand entrance. Let’s take a moment and savor that name — ”consolation” + “prize” sounds like something you give to someone who fails terribly, so terribly that it was incredibly awesome and she deserves a prize for being that terribly amazing. It’s like the Razzies for races and competitions.

Instead, back in my time, consolation prizes were given to kids who came 4th or 5th in races because calling them 4th and 5th prizes was probably worse?! Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if we gave these prizes to celebrate grand failures instead? We should have given them kids who preferred dancing on the tracks instead of running, kids who chose to paint people green and blue instead of the conventional beige, kids who skipped the math Olympiad to practice basketball. (All true stories btw) Let’s use these prizes to celebrate sucking, celebrate being different, celebrate taking risks.

Because you know what, at the end of this ultimate race of your life, that is also sometimes called “life” for short, comes the a grand Oprah-style giveaway. “You get a consolation prize, and you get a consolation prize, everyone gets a consolation prize”, she would probably say.

Because nobody wins this race. We will all leave as grand failures. So let’s bring out those consolation prizes already.

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This is my first attempt at getting back to blogging after 12 years. Will be posting more here - https://medium.com/@bhavnatoronto