That’s what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we’ve changed because of it, and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way is winning.

Richard Bach is an American author and a former USAF fighter pilot, Air Force captain, and latter-day barnstorming pilot. Bach is known for his 1970s bestsellers, Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah. A writer of both fiction and nonfiction flight-related books, Bach utilizes real-life events in his semi-autobiographical works to impart philosophical wisdom regarding humans’ physical limitations.