Winning, Losing, and Learning

Or perhaps I ought to title this blog post "Losing, Learning, and Winning."

I just finished playing a few rounds of Magic: the Gathering with my brother. He has been a fan of the game for a while now, but this is his first time actually playing the game with his own deck. Until now, his knowledge of the game has been merely theoretical. He has enjoyed learning about the cards and the story of Magic, and now he is finally getting some practical experience with building and playing his own deck. And it has been a learning experience. He won some games and lost a game, he made some good moves and some bad moves, and through it all, my brother has learned more about how to play Magic and how to play his deck, specifically. And that's what we were really hoping to accomplish. Those games we played tonight weren't so much about playing the game as they were about learning how to play it. In that sense, my brother "won" with every move he made (even the bad ones), and since that was my goal as well, so did I. We both won tonight, and we had fun doing it.