Success Often Hides Behind A Collection Of Failures
Yes, the title statement couldn’t be more correct. Trying again is a sacred right and duty that no human being should renounce. Anyone who has had to face great difficulties and failures for a long time has two paths as an option to take: not to try again and get carried away by the inevitable inertia of life, or to try again and use the accumulated experience.
There are many people who have tried again after decades of failures and difficulties. Did you know, for example, that Nelson Mandela spent 30 years in prison before leaving and becoming the man who changed South Africa’s history?
But of course, “he was Nelson Mandela and I am an ordinary human being” , some will say. That said, they are likely to list the thousands of reasons the great South African leader achieved this, but conclude that they cannot do it themselves. They don’t realize that this resistance to trying is the biggest obstacle to achieving what they want.
It is true that these achievements of historical and global reach require that there be a confluence of certain circumstances. But it is also true that there are individual achievements that are comparable to this. Just the fact that someone achieves their dreams, after enduring long periods of failure, is an example that is priceless to those around them. It’s an effort to make the world we all live in better.
Trying is more important than achieving
An exciting life worth living is one where you never give up trying again. What do we live for if not to make the experience a tribute to life itself?
Nobody forces a person to come out of boredom, to show his courage, to take the risk of losing. But let’s be clear: if you don’t, it’s not because you can’t try something better. What happens is that fear takes hold of you and it is out of fear that you resist trying. Make no mistake: it’s not fatigue, it’s not lack of ability, or age. It’s fear that doesn’t allow you to act.
Perhaps you haven’t realized that trying to pursue what you want is as important or more important than achieving it. It’s the salt of life. What gives flavor to your days and your afternoons and your nights. That’s what makes the difference between feeling content just to live and getting caught up in the question of why you live.
Failures and their misleading concept
I looked for the etymology of the word “failure” and came across a surprise that, anyway, I already sensed. This word comes from the Latin root “quat”, which means “shaking”; and the Italian prefix “fra”, which means “in the middle”. Therefore, the word fail would be something like “being in the middle of a shake-up”. What do you think?
If we incorporate this into the topic that concerns us, we could say that failure can be assumed as a fright, a crossroads to attract attention, to wake up to something. Turns out that’s what failure is: a discovery that pulls you out of error, that opens your eyes. In fact, its negative connotation became more intense when, based on different models, it began to compare the functioning of the mind with the functioning of a machine.
At some point in history, the word “failure” became synonymous with “defeat”, when in fact it isn’t. In turn, the word “defeat” became synonymous with “surrender”. I think this is all valid in the language of war. It is in this area where even triumphs are sad and failures are realities that put freedom, life and dignity at risk.
In the fertile terrain of human activity, this “shaking” is actually a moment of revelation. This is how it works in science, in art, and in all positive fields of reality. There is practically no human action that does not incorporate a factor of failure and another of achievements at the same time. One of the few occasions when failure turns into hard defeat is in those dark moments where we decide not to try again.
Images courtesy of Eileen O’Kaily, Art BlackFantasy.
