Winning is A Decision

Winning is a journey not too many people want to start and many never do. With that there are also people who think they’ve started and have been stuck in an illusion their whole lives. We all know the story of the three little pigs, right? The story starts out with three pigs in three different houses living in harmony. The first pig has a house built by straw the second twigs and the third brick. Randomly one day a big and (relatively bad) wolf comes along and tries to eat them. He blows both their houses down except for the third pig because his house was strong enough to withstand the wolfs powerful winds and the moral of the story is dependent on who you had teaching you. One being friendship and how the power of having reliable friends can come in handy in times of struggle, but if the wolf represents calamity in the world and the houses represent how prepared we are for it then the moral becomes more about building yourself up to be so strong that nothing can move you. However, in reference to winning there can be a different perspective all together. For example, imagine the pigs don’t know each other at all. They each build their respective houses and go about their days as usual, and the wolf instead of being “big and bad” is seen as a regular wolf and like regular wolves eating other animals is normal as its more for survival and not being subjectively mean. He still stumbles upon all three pigs individually and for the purpose of the story line he still blows their houses down. Now the first pig that built his house out of straw is completely confident that the wolf is not capable of blowing his house down. Straw might have been the only thing in his area, he might not know much about the strength of wolves we don’t know for certain all we know is he built his house out of straw. Straw is the weakest material in the story, so we know that he was done the fastest between the three pigs. With such speed he was able to enjoy the fruits of his labor quicker much like instant gratification. Without any thought of what could potentially harm him, or what the best material was around him he would proceed to build something that was sufficient for the needs he was thinking about presently like shelter, warmth, and stability. This leaves him open for an opportunistic wolf that appears on the scene hungry and as quickly as the pig built his home the wolf just as quickly blows it down and feasts on the pig.

The second pig was slightly more intelligent but not really. This pig can be associated with fake smart people. These are the people that will act like they know it all but, in all actuality, they are basically in the same situation as the first pig. The only difference between the two is the second pig built his house from pride. Since he used sticks, we know that he wanted to build a slightly stronger house but didn’t want to use the best material around him either. We can assume the second pig is smug because his avoidance of the straw. Being smart enough to realize that the straw is too weak, but the brick is too much work he keeps himself at a happy middle ground thinking this is all it will take to protect him. This pig puts in a decent effort to build his house and we know that his house took slightly longer to build than the first however, this pig will suffer the most tragedy out of the three. The first pig being just ignorant only lost what he put in which was basically nothing. If he hadn’t been eaten and escaped, he could have easily built another straw house elsewhere; the second pig truly thought that his house was the best, and nothing could take it down. He didn’t put in the most effort of the three but put in significantly more than the first pig so when the wolf moves upon him and blows his house down not only is it a physical loss, but a huge blow to his ego and pride. This is where the saying “Ignorance is bliss” comes into effect as it’s easier to accept loss when it wasn’t understood how to avoid it in the first place. To consciously know about the dangers and how to mitigate them and still encounter those same dangers and lose is a different story.

Then we have the third pig who is not the best pig he’s just the most diligent pig. When he started building his house, we can assume the first thought he had was that of was threats. Unlike the first pig he understands his environment and unlike the second pig he has a realistic view on himself and realizes anything can happen to anybody. Using this knowledge, he prepares for the worst possible outcome using the best materials he can find no matter the cost or time he must put into the project. This grueling hard work as we know from the story pays off though as when the wolf approaches the third house hungry, he leaves hungry. Once again, the third pig was no better than the other two, he was just more diligent and cautious about his surroundings and what he can and cannot do to prevent any damage on himself. He took this knowledge and what he could change and made the best of his situation netting him a positive result in this case surviving the wolf attack.

In this situation it’s easy to determine the winners and losers of the story. The winners are the ones who continue to live, and the losers are dead. Both the first and second pig were eaten because of either their lack of knowledge or confidence in their lack of knowledge. For fun we can say the first pig is a regular individual that knows nothing about the world but must live in it. This type of person works a regular job, may or may not live check to check and that’s what their life revolves around. The second pig (once again for fun) is a college graduate with a four-year degree. These second pig types are convinced they know everything about the world and are swallowed up because of it. Since in their eyes they know everything, and nothing can touch them at the first sign of struggle they will eventually quit.

The third pig in this story is an intellectual or has high intuition and knows what their capable of but also understands the dangers in the world they live in. These types of people are usually great at planning every minute detail and executing plans with precision; this also sets them up to be chosen for positions of higher value like being the CEO of a corporation or any supreme leadership position. The wolf however is winning for a different reason entirely. He doesn’t win based on plans or knowledge of the world around him and is driven by a different force, hunger. The wolf might know about the world around him and the dangers, but there aren’t to many things that are endangering the wolf. Also, the wolf doesn’t need a detailed oriented plan to achieve his goal. No matter how many houses the wolf must travel too he will do the exact same thing trying to accomplish his mission to be fed. The story ends with the wolf “defeated” but realistically we can assume there are more than three pigs to consume and the wolfs hunger will drive him to his next goal without fail. Hunger is also such a driving force that the wolf might adapt his strategy to get what he wants; if all the pigs start building brick houses, then it’s possible to say the wolf would learn how to dig underneath the house or even scale and enter the house from above. Knowing that we can put the wolf in the entrepreneur category. A person that is driven by one force whatever that may be and will do anything within their means to get it. Both winners are very different, but similarly decided to win. No matter what we do in life we have to choose to win every day because unfortunately no one is going to do it for us, and if we choose not to there will inevitably be a wolf, and he will blow our house down and devour us whole.