If you hit 300 you are considered a very good hitter. That means that you are at the top end of all hitters, in spite of the fact that you fail 7 times out of 10.
In horse racing, winning 25 percent of your starts means you are doing well. Again, that also means you lose 75 percent of the time.
With Lexulous, if you win 4 out of 5 times, that is pretty good. Still at 80%, than means you are going to lose 20% of the time. If you play about 50 games a week, than means you are going to lose at least 10 times.
This last week, I have been playing a woman I know that I currently can't beat. She wants to play me, even though she continually is beating me very handily. Normally I would not keep playing a player that I know is far beyond my current level of ability, but lately I have felt that I have taken my skill level and knowledge as far as I currently can go. I need to seek tougher opponents and study how they can demolish a very good player like me. In that way, I am losing games but winning knowledge. When I get to the point where I can win my share against her, I will know that the losing was worth it.
Losing is part of life. If you only won all the time, then you either need to seek tougher competition or find something else to do. Once you have reached the top of the mountain, it is time to head back down and find another mountain to climb. If you have climbed the toughest, highest, most dangerous mountain you can possibly find, it is time to try something else. Maybe run a marathon. Or swim across the English Chanel. Maybe race cars. There is another challenge waiting out there for you.
For most of us, we will never climb that mountain. We will always have some aspect of losing attached to whatever we do. We hope to get better over time and lose less, but losing, the feeling of losing, is there to enhance the exhilaration of winning. One is really always connected to the other.
The ups and downs of life are also like that. For every high there is a low. In between, there are lots of days with neither. Being too high when you are high, or too low when you are low, means you don't remember the other side of the equation. In that case, you don't remember that if you are really low, it wont last and the high will return again at some point.
Losing is temporary. You lose, you move on to the next match. You try your hardest not to lose again, all the time knowing that you will lose again, for sure, just as you will win again.
Either way, as I like to say, the sun will rise either way. Tomorrow is always a new day and dwelling on losses or being overly high because of a win is living in the past. You experience and you move on.
That is what life is about. Ups, downs, middles and keeping on keeping on.
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