Failure is, truly, inevitable. It’s what we do when it happens that matters. If there is a recipe for success, resolve figures in it. So does relentlessness, and at least a pinch of raw ability. But resilience, I think, is the main ingredient.
I had a poster on my dorm room wall in college of a man in a tuxedo, inexplicably wedged into an inner tube, floating in a pool. The caption read: “good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from poor judgment.” This is certainly true to some extent. No matter how good the advice, we may have to live it to own it. My parents’ advice was among the best I’ve ever gotten, but to get it from head to heart where its cadence could help orchestrate the long, hard march to fulfillment required living it.
Failing is inevitable. Failing at failing is tempting. Succeeding is occasional, and generally hard-earned. Succeeding at succeeding is fun, and easy, if elusive. When it happens, ignore Kipling’s excessively curmudgeonly counsel, and take mine instead: enjoy every minute of it. But know that it will be fleeting, and it will not reflect the measure of you.
Succeeding at failing is the truest measure of us all.
-- David L. Katz
