Failure is the first step to abandon something..
It reminds me of an old friend, he once told me you know what? your biggest fear is “What if I fail at something?” It was one of the bitter truths he had told me. Frankly it took some time for me to accept it. Back then when I was in the process to understand it, I came across the story of Edison, he had failed 10000 times before he made a successfully working bulb!! 10000 times? Are we in to give so much?, and then Edison had said, ”I have not failed 10000 times, I have discovered 10000 ways of not making it work.” WOW! That was a true inspiration and I thought to myself, “I am not going to be afraid of failures”. Life has never been the same again since then, I haven’t reached a point that has took me down on the graph of understanding life and being more happy.
My friend writes in her article, how her failures at previous relationships has led people judge her and to some extent decide for her. Well, this is probably what happens when someone cannot raise their game after he/she fails. What we fail to see, is the bigger part behind it. That bigger part is the lessons we got while in the process of getting it wrong. It’s okay if I fail, it’s okay if I do something wrong. Mistakes are allowed everywhere, like Harsha Bhogle says “I’ve never seen something in life where you are not allowed to go wrong or make a mistake.” Mistakes happen and they are bound to happen, are we not humans? The most important thing is we should stop controlling and worrying about them. Take life easily, sometimes go with the flow, some other times when you don’t like something go against it. Don’t judge and reflect every single time you do something if you feel happy about it. That’s how life is supposed to be… what we have grown up with is ‘try try but don’t cry; but for a change we should say try try and its okay to cry if it makes you teach and understand the lessons from your mistakes/failure.
The so called civilized people just want to see the results getting better, they want to have that gold medal in the first go or probably without failing at it! And I say, I don’t understand it and I don’t see that happening either. It’s impossible, you are bound to fail. But sadly, our friends, society, sometimes even our parents but a lot of times we ourselves cannot take failure. Failure is the best thing that can happen if you take it positively, failure is the only thing that makes you understand a lot about everything in your life, and we won’t grow if we cannot take failure.
A friend even tells me, having an attitude which says I discovered ‘n’ number of ways of not making something work is overrated. Simply, because you still don’t know the right way to make it work. Well, I don’t completely disagree with that. But when you try to do something you don’t know or if its your first experiment at something you don’t know if you are going to loose or win at it. While, a brighter side (when you fail at something), would be come on I came to know a few things which I wouldn’t have known had I not tried and that’s the complete fact, isn’t it? Lessons learnt are always better, they add to your experience and you become wiser, don’t you? Failing may not guarantee the right path! True, but then what does? Don’t we try new things to make something work? It may not give the right path but it can at least be an inspiration to try new things rather than being demotivated and stop trying.
Once, while in a conversation with a few friends I’d said, “I don’t have any regrets in my life”, a friend promptly said, well, that’s because you live in your own “real world” where everything happens for good!, Well I’ll leave that for him to judge. What I want to come at is, sure bad things happen in every one’s life, it’s not that I keep them ignored them or label them as good things but when I look at my past, I ask myself would I be this sorted, wise and matured (as against what I was ‘x’ amount of time ago, not comparing with you obviously!), if those things would not have happened? and I always get the answer as a big “NO”. I would have failed to understand if someone is trying to play mind games if it was not for that ‘x’ person who played them with me. I understood it late, but the important thing is I didn’t cry sitting there and cursing my life for having such a person or cribbing about how bad someone was to me. Nor did I stop making friends or getting involved in someone just because I came across some one like that. Instead I learnt from there and today I know how to handle mind games, that too pretty well (I’ve even got good at initiating them :p). This is just one example out of many where I failed and rose up.
Each of our lives is full of examples like these, just bring back those memories and think what was better Failing and abandoning something or failing and rising up against it?
BTW, do you remember the first time you rode a bike or a bicycle?? did u not fall? what did you do? Haven’t rode it yet?? don’t even try saying everything is not as simple as riding a bike, I’d rather say nothing is that difficult either, don’t attach unnecessary values and you’ll understand what I am trying to say. :)
Before, I end I would like to tell a short story of girl with Polio, This 4 year old girl had braces in her legs and her doctor told she would never ever be able to keep her foot on ground again, at the age of 9 she removed her braces and put the first step on ground at the age of 13, she entered first race of her life and came way way way last. Then, she entered the second race, the 3rd, the 4th and the nth, every time she used to be last. But in one race she came second last, a ray of hope rose in her heart and after the next few races she came first. In the years that came by, she participated in Olympics of 1960 and was a gold medalist. She was WilmaRudolph. Talk about persistence, talk about failures she must have gone through! The story moves me!
P.S -: For all those who haven’t failed yet or who have always abandoned trying after failure, you haven’t yet experienced the awesome happiness of a win after fighting back and probably you won’t even understand what I am trying to say here.