ALSphere Foundation
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts” – Winston Churchill
Ever since we were kids, we were taught that ‘failure is the stepping stone to success.’ What they failed to teach us was ‘How to face failure?’
Life can never be a bed of roses to all of us. When we succeed, we feel happy but when we fail, we curse our fate, lose hope or try to find a scapegoat for our failure rather than facing it fairly and squarely. John Donne in his famous poem, ‘Sweetest Love I do not go’ writes
O how feeble is man’s power,
That if good fortune fall,
Cannot add another hour,
Nor a lost hour recall!
But come bad chance,
And we join to’it our strength,
And we teach it art and length,
Itself o’er us to’advance
Life is not a measure of how successful you are. Life is a sum total of success and failure. If success is an indicator of the hard work you have put in, then, failure is an indicator of your grit and determination. King Robert Brutus of Scotland failed 14 times, yet his determination to succeed led him to attack England for the fifteenth time and attain glory.
Every invention or discovery that has made man’s life comfortable today was not successful in the first instance. Every innovator has to pass through a series of failures and partial successes. Even Albert Einstein was of the view that “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” Their failures prepared them to re-experiment in consideration of their past mistakes. Learning from failures is the hallmark of a man of fortitude and of a life well spent.
Walt Disney, a name that requires no introduction, was fired from the newspaper he worked for, for lacking creativity. The man rose from the ashes like a phoenix to become the most coveted name in Hollywood. History is replete with examples of such men and women, who were written off as failures, yet became household names because they chose to learn and move on from failures rather than stick unto them. Those who wish to avoid failures and still dream of success are nothing but procrastinators waiting for someone else to hatch their eggs. When D.H. Lawrence said, “Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved,” he clearly meant that what matters the most is, how well we spend our lives rather than how long we live.
Living well is the ultimate motto of humanity and you can only live well when you have myriad experiences of life, for life cannot be dichotomized into black and white. The spectrum of life has unlimited hues which can only be seen through the kaleidoscope of experiences– both good and bad.
Buddha said, “Every experience, no matter how bad it seems, holds within it a blessing of some kind.” Failure too, is an experience and a blessing to be counted in the journey of life.
Dr Sonika Sethi
