Originally Published on 2-12-2016
There are times in life when you may feel like you are defeated. When you feel that the people who are corrupted have prevailed. That your efforts have been all for nothing. I am here to tell you that it is okay, healthy even to fail every once and awhile. In our day it feels as though failure is always the end, when in reality, it is a new beginning. Of course society looks down upon failures, but we would not have the things that we do without failures.
Take good old Thomas Edison for example. Remember him? If you don’t, that's okay, we all nod off in history once and awhile. He was the guy that invented the lightbulb along with many other things. Whilst on his process of inventing the lightbulb, he failed only about a thousand times. A reporter once asked Edison, "How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?" To which he replied, "I didn’t fail 1,000 times, the light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps."
Now you may be asking yourself, "How on earth does this apply to me? I am nothing like Thomas Edison, he was a genius for heaven’s sake!" This may be true, but have you ever fallen down as a child? Gotten a bad grade on an assignment that you thought you did a proficient job on? Perhaps you have forgotten something that someone depended on you for? I could go on and on, but the point is that undoubtedly you have made a variety of mistakes in your life. We all have, but our society is based on success and for some people failure is not an option. (Which I think is stupid because everyone at some point has messed up)
I like to look at failure as a way to learn from the mistakes I’ve made. Last year, I took a dance class at school (which in no way means that I am a good dancer). It isn't a very hard dance class, however I cannot count the numerous times that I have fallen down in that very dance room. There are just so many things to keep track of, like when to flex and pointe your feet, whether you should be on relevé or elevé and where your arms should be at all times. Even though this can be discouraging at times, I can count on one hand the times that I have made the same mistake twice. Why? Because each time we make a mistake we are told by the teacher to work on it. Then the next times we run through the dance, we are extra conscious of our faults, and we can then easily identify what we need to change. We then learn to see failures as opportunities to improve.
You see, failure is not something to be afraid of or embarrassed about. Failing is a part of life. It is how we learn. So next time you are down on yourself for failing, remember: everyone fails every once in awhile. It’s a part of life.