In Invincible (my
favorite movie), Vince’s father tries to discourage him from trying out for the
Eagles, telling him that “a man can only take so much failure.”
Just how much failure can a man take? At what point is it okay
to give up?
I’m not normally a quitter – I usually describe myself as a
person who refuses to tip his king. For those who don’t play chess, that means
seeing that your situation has gotten so bad that there’s no point in
continuing the game. You are most likely going to lose, so you signify that you
have given up by tipping your king over. (I haven’t played chess in at least a
decade, but this has transferred to my Scrabble playing, much to my wife’s
annoyance.)
I believe that there is value in just completing a task, even
if it seems to be a lost cause. In chess in particular, I tended to make rash
and foolish mistakes, but I believe it’s possible for the opponent to do the
same, so “it ain’t over till it’s over.”
But I also consider tipping the king to be a somewhat arrogant
move, because when you do it, you are presuming that you know exactly what’s
about to happen, and that you are SO SMART that there is no possible outcome other
than what you’ve predicted. It’s like saying: “Yeah, sure you beat me, but
don’t feel so smug, because I’M SMARTER THAN YOU, and I KNEW you would before
you did, SO THERE!”
On a calmer note, I hear a lot of variations now of the phrase
“it’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” Do you want to spend my life in a
journey where people just keep giving up? Even if I’m on the winning side of
this, there’s something dispiriting about my opponent not giving his all until
it’s over.
What is the value of failure? Well, sometimes it can show
where the problem is that’s preventing your success, the element you need to
reach your goal. Failure isn’t something to be afraid of, but it isn’t
something to strive for either. In this day and age of innovation as a buzzword,
I can just see someone proudly proclaiming:
“Look how many times I’ve failed! A couple thousand more and
I’ll achieve Edison’s level of failure.”
Does failure make success? No – TRYING makes success. It
wasn’t Thomas Edison’s thousands of failures that resulted in the light bulb -
it was that he kept trying. It wasn’t all the bad things that happened to
Abraham Lincoln along the way, all the elections that he lost and hardships he
went through – it was that he didn’t give up.
Whatever it is you are doing, no matter how often you fall or
fail, pick yourself up, brush yourself off and DON’T QUIT. To make the most of
the journey, KEEP TRYING.
Just saying…
<<<>>>
William Mangieri’s writing (including his latest
ePublication: “The Wolves Will Come”) can be found in many places, such as:
- His Amazon Author page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B008O8CBDY
- Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/william-mangieri?store=book&keyword=william+mangieri
- Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/NoTimeToThink
- Createspace: https://www.createspace.com/pub/simplesitesearch.search.do?sitesearch_query=william+mangieri&sitesearch_type=STORE
Connect with him on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/NoTimeToThink
No comments:
Post a Comment