Darts: The Curious Thing About Winning

This weekend is the banquet and awards gala for the dart season that has just passed.  I do not think I am up for any kind of awards or accolades, but no doubt I have had an excellent season!  I ended up second in individual points for the season (right behind a team mate playing in his first season and making the most of it!) and I ended up first in the division in singles games.
I say this, not to brag, but because as much as I am happy with this, and had a great year, I can't help but feel unsatisfied.
One might think it is because I didn't get first, but to be honest I didn't go into the season with any expectations like that.  
What I did do, however, is play a tier down from what I had been playing. This was in many ways a needed thing to help me recover what had been a little bit of flagging confidence, and maybe even more of a deflated desire.  In terms of actual game play, I had plenty of games that I was lucky to have come out on top in, but for all intents and purposes I had become a big fish in a small pond, and once I relaxed and got the wind back in my sails, I could get away with some pretty lazy play that I surely would have been punished for a division up.
The thing is, I really felt I needed to have a 'good' season, not top of the charts, but somewhere up there, and well I got better than I had hoped for.
I also got something else, and that was a lesson, that winning truly ins't everything.
Oh, now don't think for a second that I am against being competitive, or don't want to win, it's just that the satisfaction of the win is directly proportional to the effort and challenge in achieving the win. 
From here I have developed a new (if slightly provocative new motto)
                          "Winning is for losers, learning is for champions" 
Which at face value may seem a little negative, (or even a little pretentious) but it is not meant to be.  In fact it is recognition of  a strange fact of life in sport (and I do consider darts a sport), that is that often our own desire to win, and to impress that causes us to stiffen up, to falter, and to fail when we most need and want to excel.
So now I will look to learn and improve and see these as my 'wins'.  I will not only put in the board time, but I will do so with focus and sensitivity and patience, and when I face an opponent I will hope that they will be as skilled and challenging as possible, because the greatest victory of all is the wisdom I will gain.

Now whether I will stick to that rather than falling back to old habits remains to be seen.

Oh, and one last thing, as much as I want to re-invigorate my attention to practice and improvement, what I also want to do is very much keep alive and embrace my enjoyment of darts.

What if nothing is not made better for pursuit of the love of the thing?

Thank you all for reading!!  

David 'The Abominable Throw Man' Sproull