At first glance, defeat and victory appear to be the opposite side of the same coin,

each requiring the other to have meaning. However, while this is often the case, it is
not always the case. There are defeats without corresponding victories, and vice
versa. We must try to understand this, or else one would risk viewing one's life as
having an unusually high proportion of defeats to victories, which is rarely the case.

Defeat is a thing of weariness, of incoherence, of boredom, and above all, of futility.

Almost any moment of defeat might feel as Saint-Exupéry describes, except when
defeat is glorious. One would probably prefer to fail with honour than win by
cheating.

Many a person would have seen that the deepest disappointments that come from
near-victories; to endeavour, but just to miss, is harder to bear than to realise one
had better not endeavour at all. But the moment you recognize you were after all a
contender, you understand that there are many sorts of victories, the most educative
of them being these near misses. It is what we aspire to be that shapes our
characters. It is our trying, not just our succeeding, which elevates them. The idea of
good defeats – those in which you learn, or give, or allow the better to flourish – is an
important one.

Defeat is always an opportunity, even when the better cause has been crushed by the
worse, as far too often happens. In such cases, one's sense of failure is very difficult
to bear, as is defeat caused by the natural injustice of the universe, which deprives
one of wonderful opportunities due to some irreversible stroke that had nothing or
little to do with one's own efforts - such as illness or loss, war or economic disaster.

Nothing happens without a lesson to offer, or without opening other routes into the
future. There is the greatest practical benefit in having a few failures. It simply takes
fortitude or common sense to see that the best lessons are often the most difficult,
and defeat is frequently one of these later. This, in turn, leads to the conclusion that
the only true defeat is allowing defeat to win.