by Lance Yatooma
Opinion Columnist
It is natural for humans never to want to lose, whether it is an argument with a sibling, negotiating your interests over money, or in physical combat growing up rough. I have experience in all three and never wanted the defeats to happen. However, it is in defeat you want to learn. One can learn much more about oneself and one’s limitations than the victories one worked hard for. This writing will elaborate on my thoughts on accepting life’s defeats and how to become stronger.
I chose this subject to write about because of a humorous but common reason. I watched scenes from Bruce Lee’s film Game of Death, in which he talked about how becoming more robust is accepting defeat. In one of his iconic final scenes before his passing, he says, “You want to learn the way to win! But never to accept the way to lose, to accept defeat, to learn to die is to liberate from it; you must free your ambitious mind and learn the art of dying.” Like everyone else on YouTube, I rewatched that clip four or five more times. The notion of this quote had me reflecting on so much in my life that it never went the way I had expected, and I mentally enslaved myself to a reality that had not yet existed. And to live in despair after the defeat with no way to navigate my mindset out of it.
It was not until one time I went through an almost exact situation in negotiations with someone that I had some better control over my emotions and used the previous situation from years prior as a reference to at least leave the negotiation with this person at even or even winning. I went even, which I was not mad at myself for, but I had to learn where I lost enough in this conversation not to win. This sounds like an inversion, but they will not recognize their limitations when they become too ambitious in their hoped-for result.
Another example would be the first two times I attended college, the first time at the University of Michigan over fifteen years ago. My dream school as a kid growing up in Detroit, the three years at the university were some of the toughest of my life. My personal life had no direction, and impulse control was nonexistent in the times when it mattered most. The psychological costs along the way eventually led to my grades floundering to the point where I was forced to drop out. Psychological costs from an ambitious mind at the expense of enrolling at the supposed dream school will teach defeat.
To contrast for a bit, victories in life also teach a lot. The willingness to sacrifice to meet a goal you had in mind also teaches perseverance. This is good because it can teach gratitude for the sacrifices made to succeed in the endeavor chosen. Our society is currently thankless, so if hard-earned success is gratified, we all become better for it.
We all become better at learning about ourselves during the losses and wins in life. I am learning about the limitations each of us has as individuals. I learned to accept defeat and be liberated from despair, which could loom afterward. To have gratitude and understand how important it is for yourself and those around you. Lastly, I kept my ambitious mind from putting me on a destructive path with an unconstrained vision.
