Furuya Sensei posted this to his Daily Message on June 12, 2003.
Have you ever thought about wishing? There is an interesting saying, “Be careful what you wish for." In Japanese, it is negaigoto wa yoku kangaete shinasai (願い事はよく考えてしなさい) which means “Think carefully about your wishes.” Most of us, if we had three wishes, may fall into the typical trap of asking for untold wealth, youth and the return of loved ones, etc. As the typical story goes, after our wish, everything goes bad. We always think that we know what we want and will always make the best decisions for ourselves. However, it can turn out that what we wished for was the wrong thing, delivered in the wrong way and it winds up with exactly what we didn’t want.
The same goes for "winning." We win a contest and think that we have the advantage over others or that we are better than others but wind up with just an empty victory. Winning for the wrong reasons is not winning at all. It is very much like making a wish and inadvertently wishing for the wrong thing. More often than not, we win for exactly the wrong reasons. In winning, we must do it correctly.
At the same time, we should be careful how we "lose" as well. If we lose incorrectly, we feel like we have lost everything! No, we lost a game or a contest. We didn’t die so it’s not a big deal. We might lose something in our lives but, in most cases, we can still recover. Therefore, even in losing, we must do it correctly!