To this day, I dislike playing table games. Mostly, I think it's because people take them too seriously.
As a boy, I stayed for about six weeks with my Great Aunt Sally, who lived in a big Eastern city. Aunt Sally liked to play games; but, she also liked to win! My aversion to table games came when I beat her in Monopoly. Aunt Sally said it was "disrespectful" to beat an adult and she sent me to bed early. I've always been thankful that she wasn't my mother.
While American culture is centered on the idea of winning, many mental health problems stem from not knowing how to lose. We even have had a thing in marriage where we call one of the spouses the “bread-winner.” Which, of course, must make the other spouse the “loser.” I’ve never liked the term.
My favorite athletes have always been those who could both “win well” and “lose well.” Maybe that’s why I always liked Tom Landry of the Dallas Cowboys. We miss him.
It may be a mistake to always think of loss as a means to success or even a great teacher. Sometimes loss is just an ordinary part of life --like rain or snow. Neither failure nor success is necessarily permanent. Perhaps doing our best or sticking with our convictions are loftier reasons for life than success or failure.
Should we really have to think of ourselves in the arbitrary/artificial terms of success or failure? Albert Ellis, the founder of Rational-Emotive Therapy, said, "You feel the way you think." Ellis points out that many people fail to function because "they construe failure as the worst of all possible crimes" (Ellis A., Harper R., 1961).
In order to function with the freedom and tranquility necessary for good mental health we need to know how to accept loss and failure as if they are part of the weather of life and just keep on going!
Jesus saw this principle first and gave it to us this way: "For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it." (Matthew 16:25). It is possible to use up all of your energy just trying to hold on to something. People who know how to accept loss and failure are free to act! You cannot really beat people who know how to lose --there's nothing to take from them.
Have you ever noticed that many older people are easy to be with? It's because they have had adequate experience with losses --they know the weather changes! That in itself makes them the gentle, helpful people that many of them are.