Learning to Love the Loser Inside Me
An honest reckoning with the “loser” story many of us quietly carry — and the slow, difficult work of learning mercy for the face in the mirror.
Learning to love
the old man in the mirror
in a world still kneeling
before youth,
sharp jawlines,
certainty,
and the religion of might-makes-right.
Learning to love
the body that shakes,
the voice that trembles more now,
the mind that never moved
in straight lines
but wanders in widening circles
because everything touches everything now.
Nothing feels simple anymore.
Not people.
Not pain.
Not God.
Not even myself.
Learning to love the loser
who takes too long to get to the point
because every truth arrives
dragging ten other truths behind it.
The loser
who distrusts slogans.
Who hesitates before certainty.
Who suspects most things worth saying
should be held loosely,
open to revision,
and humbled by silence.
The loser
who cannot seem to become
the loud man at the centre of the room.
The guru.
The closer.
The brand.
The one who dominates the argument,
commands attention,
takes up all the oxygen
and calls it leadership.
And stranger still,
I do not even want to become him.
At least that is what I tell myself
while secretly mourning
my failure to be just like that.
Learning to love the loser
who keeps pulling out chairs for others
while wondering
why he never chose
to sit down himself.
The man with beautiful, impossible ideas
that arrive blazing in the soul
but lose coherence
somewhere between heart, mouth, and pen.
The man who watches others speak
with precision and brilliance
and feels both awe
and inadequacy.
The man
who still believes mercy matters.
Who cannot quite surrender
his ridiculous hope
that people are rarely as simple
as the masks they harden into.
That beneath the noise,
the cruelty,
the hunger to matter,
something living
still waits
to be reached.
Who keeps feeling tenderness
even toward the abrasive ones,
the manipulative ones,
the frightened and performative ones.
Even the dickheads.
Especially when he recognizes
something of himself
inside them.
Learning to love the man
who sits beside grief quietly
with people who have nothing to offer him
except their humanity.
No ladder.
No influence.
No strategic value.
Just presence.
Just the fragile holiness
of being there.
The man
who writes as though someone is listening
while trying to convince himself
an audience of one is enough.
Who feels songs building pressure
inside his ribs
and sings anyway,
even when the melody shakes,
even when the lyrics arrive unfinished,
even when they sound out of step
with the cultural hit parade,
yet strangely in tune
with some deeper music
moving beneath things.
The man
who still carries regret
like stones in his pockets.
Who knows the sharp taste of shame.
Who has failed to love well.
Who has hidden,
placated,
performed,
hesitated,
spoken too softly
when courage was needed
and too quickly
when silence would have been kinder.
The man who feels
more unfinished than wise.
And yet—
there remains something here
beneath the embarrassment,
beneath the self-interrogation,
beneath the exhausting inner tribunal.
Something small and stubborn.
A tenderness.
A growing suspicion
that the one I keep calling loser
may simply be
a human being
escaping the hallucination
that power,
certainty,
and applause
were ever the point.
Maybe loving this human being
does not begin
when he finally becomes impressive.
Maybe it begins here.
With the trembling voice.
The unfinished thoughts.
The soft heart.
The foolish hope.
With learning to sit beside him
without contempt.
With learning that mercy,
if it means anything at all,
must eventually include
the face in the mirror.
_______
Sola Caritas,
𝞃Michael
Of Interest:
June 15 - I’m looking forward to joining this free online Process Pop-Up conversation hosted by Process & Faith around my upcoming book, Made by Love, For Love.
We’ll explore Open & Relational Theology, evolving faith, relentless love, and the possibility that love is far more central to reality than many of us were taught.
If that resonates with you, I’d love to have you join us.
Free Event Details & Registration
June 29–July 3 - I’m thrilled to be presenting at ORTcon26 this summer through the Center for Open & Relational Theology.
My session is titled:
The Shape of Love at the Heart of Everything
A reimagining of God, power, and faith in light of relentless love.
What if love is not merely something God does, but the very pulse of reality itself?
This presentation explores a renewed vision of faith shaped by Open & Relational Theology, the evolutionary spirituality of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and the possibility that uncontrolling love is the deepest truth at the heart of existence.
For those reimagining faith, wrestling with old stories, or longing for a more spacious and life-giving vision of God.
Join me and many amazing thinkers at ORTcon26.
Still time to Register
Beautiful and vulnerable! I recognize myself in a lot of that, and my thinking heads the same way as how you wrap it up.
This quote could never apply to you:
"The man with beautiful, impossible ideas
that arrive blazing in the soul
but lose coherence
somewhere between heart, mouth, and pen."