Failure as Success

 

It was Winston Churchill who said, ‘Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.’

But somehow, even accompanied by inspirational pictures of men leaping bravely across gaps and landing in the unknown, that sentiment fails to inspire me much.  I can’t see the value in going from failure to failure.  Failure is filled with such heaviness, with our private, tortured thoughts of having gone wrong or wasted time. Probably because I spent years feeling like I was not getting anywhere fast, I now flee from the feelings of loss and waste that failure conjures up. Trapped is the story of how I reclaimed my enthusiasm for life, by redefining failure and remembering what success felt like.

I know it sounds cheesy and a bit clichéd, but for me, success is about accepting that failure is a matter of perspective.  Have we failed, when our flambé turns into a table cremation? When our wallet slips from our hands and ends up crushed under the wheels of a juggernaut in the road? Or when the book we spent months writing ends up disappearing into the micro-intricacies of our defective hard-drive? Do events like these offer unexpected opportunities?

For me, success consists in seeing everything that happens as an opportunity, to decide who we are, in relation to every event unfolding around us. This morning, I spent an hour looking for some recent photos of Seline, left over from a new passport application. I wanted to send them to my family. Despite searching high and low, I haven’t found them. In passport photos we are not allowed to smile, so maybe the best thing to do is to get more photos taken at Timpsons, and let her grin. If I’m going to send snaps away in Christmas cards, would I not prefer to send a smile? Of course.

Whether something fails spectacularly, or merely trips us up, what might it be trying to tell us? How can we make it our next success?

Ignition pattern, prescribed burn

Prescribed fire, Florida