When you win but you lose so much doing it that it may not be a true win. It comes from a Greek king who battled the Romans and won but suffered unsustainably heavy losses. The Romans actually lost more soldiers in the battle but they had waves upon waves of people coming after. The Greek king did not. He won the battle but lost the war.
Todd Van Der Werff, the terrific TV critic for Vox, turned a joke from fellow terrific critic Alissa Wilkinson into a little meditiation on content, life, and ephemerality:
"I just don't know, Linus," sighed Charlie Brown. "I just don't know."
The two were leaning, as they so often did, on the brick garden wall, overlooking the snowy expanse in their little neighborhood. This would be a baseball diamond come spring, but for now, it was home to snowball fights and other winter fun.
Linus knew what Charlie Brown was upset about. He had checked the latest Google Analytics numbers, but he wanted to be sure. "What is it, Charlie Brown?" he asked for the brief moment his thumb was dislodged from his mouth.
"My traffic is way up month-to-month since I started writing about Westworld fan theories, but I don't feel good about my work or myself. I feel like my desire for traffic is driving my writing, and not vice versa," Charlie Brown said.
"What would you rather be writing about?"
A couple reflections, if you'll indulge:
There is no more banal form of non-terrible content on the internet than episodic TV criticism. It has changed how people interact with TV and has upended much of the criticism industry (loose term). Van Der Werff knows this. He's one of the four or five TV critics worth reading, largely because he is skilled in going to the broad view instead of the FOMO-style reaction posts that pass as "reviews." And because he knows this dynamic better than most, it makes the piece hit harder.
Charlie Brown and Linus exist in every writer, every creative. We all want people to enjoy what we do. It's a thrill when we get to #1, and those thrills help hold off hungry nights later in the game. There is always a game. Artistic expression vs. food has always existed and will always exist. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.
So how do we respond? Van Der Werff gets at that later, and you should go read that. The Kierkegaard quote Linus uses is well-put: "What if life is not a puzzle to be solved, but a mystery to be lived in?" And Snoopy, at the end, proving Shakespeare's adage that the world's a stage and all of us are merely players. Our task is to make the best use of the time and tools given us. Whatever we do will fade, and its place will remember it no more. But there is beauty in toil. Even if we don't understand it now, one day we will, when the darkened mirror is no more. Until then, work your garden.
WritingTodd Van Der WerffPeanutsKierkegaardHomages are fun, Charlie BrownVanityToil