Indispensable Failure

The goal is always success. If you are aiming for failure, you must be playing a different game than the rest of us. 

But the outcome is not always success. The projects do not always happen as planned, the response to the piece is not always what you intended, the turnout is not always what you estimated, and when the targets are not hit, you've failed. 

I know the feeling. 

I wonder how it feels to the father who can't get a job because all he's ever done is farm his plot of land in Shingal, and now he is living in tent on someone else's property in the middle of the city. Or for the girl who had planned to attend school and become the first doctor in her family, and now she is pregnant with a child of ISIS. I wonder how it feels to mom who has worked nights and days for years to send her child to a good school, only to find out that he couldn't pass the exams. Or the young man who has yet another great business idea, but no funds to make it happen and no one left to believe in him. 

I wonder how it feels for you? Do you acutely feel failure in the home? In a relationship? At work? In a dream? 

We are all accustomed to failure in one area or another. And, if you haven't felt failure, then I would question whether you've lived and dreamed. 

But the fact remains that failure, though unwelcome, is known by all of us. And though nearly every one of us would wish it away, I think it is truly an indispensable gift. 

Because without failure, we would not know what endurance means. Without failure, we would not be forced to refine ideas. Without failure, we wouldn't become resilient and persistent and able to get up again. 

There are many who meet failure and believe that it was the ceiling, the top of their ascent, that they have reached the end of their capabilities. Failure weeds out the weak. 

But failure isn't a ceiling. Failure does not mean you've reached the end of your journey. 

Failure calls to you with an invitation to make it better, fix the problem, move on. Try again. Be better for it. 

And while I'll maintain that failure is not welcomed happily by anyone, we would not be who we are without it. So, fail on, and make the world a better place because of it.