Rambling : On Failure

I know this girl that is so lucky; it seems that everything she touches turns to gold. She isn't rich, but she always seems to have a comfortable amount of money. She always gets her dream job and seems to continually find meaning and fulfillment in the things that she does. She is smart, charismatic, humble and interesting. It is enough to make you want to projectile vomit.

There have been times in my life where I have wished that I was as resilient as my friend. I often stand on the sidelines and watch her barreling into the unknown with abundant gusto heretofore unseen and I feel scared for her, worrying that she will get her hopes dashed. Truthfully though, I mostly feel envious.

As someone who is not quite so impervious to the disappointments of failure and who has a veneer that is not quite as hardened, I lay awake at night and wonder if she ever feels heartbroken or downtrodden or just plain, old bummed-out when things don’t work out as planned.

Finally, my curiosity got the better of me and so I asked her about it. I was surprised to learn that she often feels scared when leaping boundlessly into a new adventure. She admitted that she fails more often than one would be lead to believe, but when she does, she almost never dwells on it (beyond a brief requisite mourning time).

I never before realized how hard she works to make things come together. She often spends her weekends and evenings boning up on areas in her industry with which she is not familiar, she works hard to make industry contacts and always goes into an unknown situation with a positive attitude. When things don’t turn out to be in her favor, she immediately seeks the most direct route to turning it around. This isn't to say that she is impenetrable, but she recognizes that dwelling on failure for an extended period of time will only keep her from taking the action she needs to get what she wants.

Thomas Edison definitely had the right idea with respect to failure when he said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

As someone who puts her whole heart and soul into every endeavor, I still can't imagine being so blase about failure. If there is any lesson to be gleaned from the conversation with my friend it is that failure is universal. Even those we consider to be the most successful are no strangers to failure, they just tend to dwell on it (or talk about it) less than the rest of us.

Maybe luck really is where opportunity meets persistence and failure is just another opportunity to figure out what is not working and make it right.