Failings and Failures

So to redefine failure, it isn’t just about how little money you have stored up or even how little you earn. It isn’t how “small” your office is or how insignificant you think you are. Failure is when you live life aimlessly on the wrong path. Failure is also when you pursue a life goal either because someone else feels you should or when that is the direction society is headed. The failure is the teacher who is teaching only to earn a salary. The failure is the nurse who does it simply because she didn’t have any other thing to do. Also – and get ready for this one – the failure is the Local Government Chairman, State Governor or even President who is occupying that hallowed office only because he had the money to buy it or because “people said he should contest.”

Failing is an occurrence, a happening, an instance. Failing is external. It is a thing that happens to people when they get out of their comfort zones and try something different. Failing is a natural episode in the process which leads to expertise. A failure, on the other hand, is a person, a way of life, a life pattern. Being a failure is internal. It isn’t something that happens to a person but the person himself. A failure is a person who depressingly sits back in his pool of sorrow and feels he can never be anything better than he is at the moment. A failure is someone who has truncated the failing process by making it his destination.

So the question which naturally arises is whether you fail or are a failure. It was the Late Maya Angelou that said, “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.” Believe me when I say to you that I know firsthand the pain and difficulty that comes from failing. Interestingly though, I will not sacrifice the fleeting peace of not trying to take away the excitement of trying something. I understand that it is only those who dare to fail that can ever achieve anything worthwhile.

Finally I’ll like you to consider the golden words of Winston S. Churchill: “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”