Short Story

Everyone fails at something in their lifetime. “Victory breeds hatred, for the conquered are unhappy. He who has given up both victory and defeat, he, the contented, is happy.” This verse from Chapter XV of The Dhammapada perfectly explains that in order to fail you have to succeed. I learned this life lesson a year ago, after my team and I lost a game for the first time in a while.

The ultimate consequence of my actions, or rather inactions, was my defeat. As with any defeat, I was immediately smothered in feelings of regret and disappointment. The main source of these emotions came from the fact that I knew I could have done better. Yet at the same time, I knew the reason I did not do better was because my heart was never dedicated to winning in the first place. I felt disgusted with myself for even having run at all, and I could not bear to look at myself in the mirror. It took a while to forgive myself, but doing so allowed me to learn a profound lesson from this

“What is important is for young people to learn that it’s okay to make mistakes and that losing is no big deal. In fact, some olympic gold medalist have said that losing was the best thing that happened to them, because it motivated them to work harder” (Merryman 3). If you don’t succeed the first time then learn what you did wrong and work on it.

I believe Jimmy Connors best embodied my attitude toward failure in his iconic quote, “I hate to lose more than I love to win.” As someone who has actively participated in sports all throughout high school, as well as serving captain of the varsity football team this senior year, I am no stranger to Failure. As time goes on I have noticed the losses tend to stick more than the wins. I believe this is because of all the ‘what if’s that accompany failure. What if I had been a little bit faster? What if we didn’t drop that pass? What if we stopped that play? No matter the team, no matter how hard we played, every loss always left me with these same questions times 1000. However, no loss was more impactful than this year’s Thanksgiving day game

Ideally, the celebrations of hard fought victories will outnumber the agonizing losses in large quantities. However, the lessons learned from devastating defeats are often the most important tool in the quest for success. As Bobby Jones suggested, losses, by their very nature, offer the most compelling evidence that modifications and improvements are warranted. In other words, a loss encourages the athlete to channel the disappointment into a positive progression of steps, thus instigating a more favorable outcome in the future. The fact is that in both life and sports, defeat is inevitable, and the skill to use the lessons learned in a loss to initiate the groundwork for future success is a winning

As I sat there in a motionless position similar to that of the Thinker, I was reminded of the fundamental lesson of sports: There is no substitute for winning. People today often accept a misconception to about the value of losing. Losing sucks; there is no sugarcoating it. When an individual completely invests oneself to achieve a goal, anything other than victory can only be considered a failure. Once we realized our opportunity to reach, and in our minds likely win, the state championship, our whole season seemed like the rising action in preparation for a deflating anticlimax. We didn’t have to accept failure, but we had to accept the fact that we had failed. I had to accept the fact that I had failed. Somehow, there is a bitter form of beauty in that dedication to a goal, but even more, in the perseverance to continue.

"You learn a lot more from your losses than your wins. You can dwell on what you've lost, and how. But then you need to let it go, because you can't change the result. All you can do is be better next time, get back out there and try again." These are the words of the famous Australian surfer, Stephanie Gilmore.

Hera is the queen of all Gods in Greek Mythology. She is prominent for being the Goddess of marriage, childbirth, and protecting women from men, who did not treat a women properly. Although she sounds graceful because of her desirable traits, she had a dark side that her husband (and brother), Zeus, created. She is infamously known for her actions caused by jealousy. These acts of jealousy were a factor of her marriage.

You ain’t content to just take those wins and be grateful; you have to verbally humiliate your opponents; you’ve gotta make make guys or gals who already are down feel like shit.

In conclusion, winning is always a great way to end a competition but it isn’t the only option. By accepting and expecting defeat a person will learn to have self confidence. In which teaches them to never abandon hope. Hanging on to hope allows people to not be ashamed of losing. Without shame or embarrassment everyone is truly enjoying the time spent with his/her

Sometimes two different writers have two different styles that contradict the others. Yet, the two styles can be similar in many different ways. This is the case with two writers: William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. William Faulkner was a writer that wrote a piece called Absolam, Absolam, which featured complex, non-linear sentences with complex language. The creator of The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway, wrote simplistic sentences that were straight to the point and unadorned. The two styles of these two writers are so completely opposite from each other that they are often parodied. But, even though there were many differences, there were some similarities.

Buying cheap auto insurance is not as straightforward as it seems. Sure, there's nothing complicated with obtaining several online motor insurance quotes from different car insurance companies to get the best deal. But there is more to auto insurance than financial protection in the event that you get into an accident, resulting in damage to property, other vehicles, or both.

“Oh no, please don’t tell me this is happening. Mom, can I just skip this tournament?” I pleaded, “There is absolutely no hope for me.” Being the dramatic person I am, I lamented the imminent end of my tennis career. I went into the tournament with an expectation of failure. I started the match by accidentally whacking the ball over the fence, tripping on my own feet rushing to end the point. The little confidence I had when going into the match dissipated within a few minutes. I continued the match pondering how to angle my racket to put spin on the ball. Every time I failed, I blamed it on the high skill level of my opponent. Unsurprisingly, I lost in an hour. When looking back on that match, I realized that it could have gone differently had I not brought myself down before. My lack of

Marcus had a bemused look on his face that melted into one of pure incredulity. First she refused to come down, and then , she wandered off without leave? As a naval commander and ship's master, the penalty for any slave who left the person of any officer without leave was to be lashed to the deck for a half day and get 10 strokes of the Cat. And yet, this brazen cocotte with the copper tresses felt free to so disrespect her own Master in his own household?

Over the summer, I played tennis with my dad and younger brother pretty often. I always had this preconceived notion before we went to play that I was a better player than my brother, even though he is amazing, especially for his age. One day, I played awfully; I felt like I hadn’t played that poorly in years. Instinctively, I came up with every possible excuse to reason why I played so badly. It was too hot; I couldn’t see the ball; I was distracted by the dogs barking nearby. I went on and on with excuses, external factors, but I never attributed my failure to any internal factors. I didn’t understand why I didn’t play well, so there must have been some other reason. I grudgingly accepted my defeat and told myself that there is always another day for me to play better. I realized that I wasn’t being honest with myself about the game after I went home and started replaying it in my head. It slowly dawned on me that I was at fault for not playing well, not the weather or other noises. I didn’t bend my knees enough, I didn’t follow through with my racquet, and I was too lazy when I had to sprint towards the ball. It was because of me that I lost the game, not because of something else. This showed me that just because something doesn’t go my way doesn’t mean I get to blame it on some external factor; I have to take some time to think about what happened to see if the reason the event occurred was due to what I did. On the other hand, when I found out that I performed really well on any test, I didn’t attribute it to the weather or to any other external factor; I never thought “The test was just really easy that time” or “The teacher graded it leniently this time”. I gave credit to myself for putting so much time and effort into studying, and I