Some defeats are disheartening and heartbreaking. We give it everything and are nearly at the win, only for it to be snatched away from our hands due to a moment of bad luck. It takes time to recover from these.

Some don't feel like defeats at all. Sure, we didn't win, but we never felt we had any real chance in the first place. We just entered for the sake of it. Maybe it was fun just to participate.

Some come as a big relief. We found ourselves in a situation where we were winning without even doing anything, and the consequences of winning are something we weren't sure we wanted. And when the tables turn and defeat finally arrives, it's a big relief.

Some don't matter. We could have won, we could have lost. It wouldn't have mattered either way. Now that it's over, we just move on to the next thing.

And then there are the really rare ones. The beautiful defeats. We participated wholeheartedly, we endeavoured to win, but were thoroughly outclassed. It was such a humbling experience that we actually found it an enriching experience, because it showed us our place and taught us there's a long way to go for us, and motivated us to get there. It inspired us to appreciate and aim for the quality we need to climb up to in order to win in such a situation. It reminded us to drop our ego and to aspire to be much better.

In reality, there is only one kind of a defeat. 

It us how we choose to react to a defeat that manifests in us perceiving different types of defeats.

If we choose them to be, all our defeats can be beautiful.