He no longer thought of winning. His youthful years of games were gone, and he no longer thought of life in such a way. That there must necessarily be fixed winners and losers in engagements, to him, was sophistry of small thought. To believe such did not mean life never played in contradiction to the ideal, but such was still the standard when overwhelmed by collective, contradicting minds.
But he was patient.
He sought out others that saw different, thought and lived like he, indifferent to the immanent and its projections of power, fear, and loss. With these others, the ideal—lived in complimented resonance—manifested as truly as the contradiction when surrounded by the small.