Losing prepares you for the heartbreak, setback, and tragedy that you will encounter in the world more than winning ever can. By licking your wounds you learn how to avoid getting wounded again the next time. The American military learned more by its defeat in South Vietnam than it did in all the victories ever fought for the Stars & Stripes. Loss invites reflection and reformulating and a change of strategies. Loss hurts and bleeds and aches. Loss is always ready to call out your name in the night. Loss follows you home and taunts you at the breakfast table, follows you to work in the morning. You have to make accommodations and broker deals to soften the rabbit punches that that loss brings into your daily life. You take the word "loser" and add it to your resume and walk around with it on your name tags it hand-feeds you your own shit in doses too large for ever the great beasts to swallow. The word "loser" follows you, bird-dogs you, sniffs you out of whatever fields you hide in because you have to face things clearly and you cannot turn away from what is true. My team won eight games and lost seventeen…..losers by any measure. Epilogue from Pat Conroy's magnificent opus of the 1966-67 basketball season at The Citadel, "My Losing Season".
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