The Sweetest Victory

I wrote this essay on the topic “Success is counted sweetest by those who never succeed.” I think it is fairly appropriate to share it today as a response to today’s Daily Prompt.

---

If you want to know what it’s like to win ask the one who lost. The idea of victory is sweeter to those who lose than it is in reality to those who win. I think it says that those who don’t succeed imagine that it taste sweeter then it does for those who succeed and do taste it. Lack of success, is what makes the actual success so sweet. This is the opposite of sour grapes fable.

“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
― Winston Churchill

“Those who never succeed” place the highest value on success. They count it sweetest. Those who succeed never truly appreciate it—it is only those who fail, or who lack something, that can truly appreciate how wonderful it would be if they did succeed. To understand the value of nectar, one must feel “sorest need”. The members of the victorious army are not able to define victory as well as the defeated, dying man who hears from a distance the music of the victors. “Success”—can best be comprehended by someone who “needs” it.

Those who always win never know the true value of winning and those who never win long for the win all the time. We gain perfection through failure.

“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.”
― Truman Capote

Through defeat we try to appreciate the real value of success. Those who are in love they can not understand the value of love but those who have failed in love, know the real meaning of love. Just like saying if you have never lost hope how could you ever find it?

Those who have not succeeded are the ones who crave it the most. To a person who never wins, victory is sweet, but to a person who has always won, they don’t really understand the value of success. For those who overcome the great battle, they can not measure the significance of victory compared to the losers. It is in defeat that we truly learn to appreciate victory.

“Sometimes it takes a good fall to really know where you stand”
― Haley Williams

Victory must take its natural route and cannot be rushed. In other words, it must be fully appreciated through an initial, natural defeat before a more fulfilling victory can be realized. Victory could be realized sooner, but it would be neither sweet, nor appreciated.

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
― Confucius

The realization of true victory in the midst of defeat is the true success.

“A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.” – David Brinkley

For how can one truly understand happiness without the accompaniment of sadness? Or love without hate? Success cannot be realized without at first knowing the desperation that comes along with losing.

“I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.” -Michael Jordan

Success is the ultimate triumph and is sweetest to those who desperately desire it but have never obtained it. Success is sweetest to them than to the people who already have power and success. Some people work so hard and struggle to reach a goal, but somehow even when triumph is at their fingertips, it still remains out of their grasp. Perhaps in the absence of triumph, success does become an obsession. The fortunate ones who already have success, on the other hand, do not seem to appreciate it as much. To them success is like an everyday common occurrence.

“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

The feeling of being ‘so near and yet so far’, agonizingly brings home the point that it is in defeat that we truly learn to appreciate victory – so much so, that the more the defeats, the sweeter the success.

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
― Winston Churchill

It is true that the defeated can feel both victory and defeat, while the victorious can only feel the win, then we are stuck with the “grass is always greener…” clause. If done with respect, only then can the winners actually be victorious. Therefore the onus is upon the victorious to rise above the win.

Some people define success by virtue of positions that they acquire and assume in life. But it is not only just about success, but about want and desire, too. As Albert Einstein said:

“Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.”