Everyone’s a Winner (Until the Backup Is Needed)

(Audio Deep Dive English; Audio Deep Dive Bangla)

There’s a fairy tale we like to tell children, preferably early and often, that life isn’t about competition. That everyone is special, equally good, equally deserving. It’s a charming story—like Santa Claus or meritocracy—but wildly irresponsible as preparation for adulthood. In the world we actually inhabit, competition isn’t optional. It’s the air we breathe. We live inside hyper-capitalism—of money, of attention, of desire, of emotion—and in every market there is a winner, because someone has to be chosen. The rest are not “also considered.” They are discarded. Politely, of course. With a smile. Possibly with feedback, which is just salt administered with a clipboard. Why someone wins is never about fairness. It’s about judgment. And judgment belongs entirely to the chooser. The chooser decides what counts, what matters, what is suddenly “essential.” Everyone else can have contributed, sacrificed, invested emotionally or professionally—it doesn’t matter. Once the choice is made, the narrative collapses into a single protagonist. The others become footnotes, then ghosts. We dress this up with phrases like “everyone brought something valuable” or “you matter,” which are not consolation but anesthesia. Equality is announced only after inequality has been finalized. Then comes the truly embarrassing part: the provisional winner. The temporary champion who mistakes selection for virtue. This person is unbearable. They sit at a coffee table—Americano, no sugar—and speak with the calm authority of someone who believes the universe just validated their worth. They explain the outcome as if it were inevitable, rational, deserved. They use words like alignment and fit and timing, blissfully unaware that all of these words come with expiration dates. What makes the provisional winner stupid is not arrogance but ignorance. They don’t understand volatility. They don’t grasp that they were chosen not because they are exceptional, but because they were convenient. They matched the mood, the moment, the market. They believe the game has ended. The loser knows better. The loser learns immediately what the winner refuses to accept: nothing holds. Choice is provisional. Desire is fickle. Loyalty is conditional. The loser doesn’t argue because argument assumes permanence. They walk away wounded but educated. They understand that the narrative will rotate again. And waiting—quiet, observant waiting—is where wisdom lives. But here’s the part people miss: the chooser is never as decisive as they perform. Behind the confident selection is a far less heroic instinct—risk management. The chooser doesn’t just choose; they hedge. They crown a winner while quietly keeping the loser within reach. Not erased, not released—archived. Placed gently in the hind pocket of possibility, labeled “just in case.” This is not kindness. This is insurance. You hear it in the language: “Let’s stay in touch.” “I really value you.” “You never know what the future holds.” These are not emotional statements; they are contractual clauses. The chooser leaves the door ajar because markets shift and today’s winning horse has a habit of limping tomorrow. Commitment is expensive. Optionality is cheap. So the chooser diversifies emotionally the way a cautious investor spreads assets: one primary bet and a few backups, all maintained with plausible deniability. This is where frozen narrative amber becomes operational, and where the cruelty sharpens. Denial of presence in interpersonal settings is simply the denial of contact while pretending contact still exists, and that is what makes it so corrosive. It is not honest absence, where someone leaves or disengages; it is a curated withholding in which presence is replaced by signals, encounters by acknowledgments, meetings by messages. The chooser maintains contact in form while eliminating contact in substance, preserving the appearance of connection without paying its cost. Presence is embodied—it requires time, proximity, accountability, and risk—and denying it is a deliberate act of control. The person denied presence is kept visible but unreachable, remembered but never included, addressed but never met, suspended in a relationship that is technically alive but functionally inert. This is not distance or busyness or bad timing; it is a power move that regulates access, freezes intimacy, and preserves optionality. Contact becomes conditional, revocable, and entirely on the chooser’s terms, while the other person waits—waiting not as a shared relational act but as unilateral labor imposed by imbalance. Denial of presence is the quietest way to keep someone emotionally available without ever allowing them to arrive. Frozen narrative amber is not nostalgia. It is control. It allows the chooser to say, “You still matter,” while ensuring you never actually show up. You are being paused. And paused lives are incredibly useful to people who fear commitment but adore leverage. The provisional winner never sees this. They assume exclusivity. They assume loyalty. They imagine bridges were burned to reach them. That’s the mistake. Choosers don’t burn bridges; they damage them—just enough to slow traffic while keeping access. Because burned bridges eliminate options. Damaged bridges preserve leverage. And when the winner falters—as winners always do—the chooser doesn’t panic. They pivot. They reach into the hind pocket, retrieve the previously archived narrative, and rewrite history at astonishing speed. Suddenly the loser “always mattered.” Suddenly the connection “never really ended.” Suddenly the backup feels like destiny. The loser, if they’ve learned anything, recognizes the move instantly. They understand now that being kept is not being chosen. That being remembered is not the same as being valued. That availability is not affection. And they understand the final truth: you cannot thaw amber from the inside. The only way to reclaim presence is to shatter the display case and walk away. There are always winners and losers. The difference is that the loser understands impermanence early, while the winner clings to the fantasy of stability. The loser learns the system. The winner believes the story has ended. It never has. Because in this ecosystem, victory is not proof of worth. It’s just a timestamp. ABBA said it well in their song, “Now it is history.”