Tuesday, March 3, 2009

This picture was taken when my husband and I were raising baby chickens. The bird (Jerry)featured in this picture ended up being a rooster, despite all I had read about roosters, I knew he would be different. I could tame him, and he was very sweet for a few months. Then at around six months old he turned on me, viciously! Let us say he met an unsavory end and I felt the sting of failure.The following statements are made by an “expert” in failure. I flunked, kindergarten, second grade, and fourth grade then dropped out of high school. As a youth I had extensive school testing, my mother was informed the best placement for me was special Ed.I joined a cult, and then moved to the ranks of pastor's wife. In essence, I was an assistant cult leader. I could list all my failures, but I don’t think a single book could contain them all.I was thinking about a statement made in class last night::“Success is acknowledging that you may fail” (cited source) Ms. L Cheraz
I do think you are onto something, but if I could I would modify your statement:
“Success is embracing failure, learning its lesson, then getting up and moving on.”
Life is about a lot of things, I don’t claim to know them all. However, learning and applying learning are surely among those things. The more intense the pain of failure the deeper the message is driven home (if you let it).Although, at times other times, having an acute awareness of failure is not a good thing.Many people are paralyzed by the fear of failure. Others never step outside of their safety zone or go beyond their range of proficiency because the possibility of failure is so tangible to them and the need to retain the current state of their ego is simply overrides the desire to learn new things.andWhat do we tell our children about success?“You can be anything.”If they say they want to be president or an astronaut, we say “absolutely”We all fail. Failure gets our attention. Teachers know it, you can’t teach anyone unless you can:#1. get their attention.
#2. prove you know something of value that they don’t
or reveal a “blind” spot in understanding the student was previously unaware of.
#3. the student has a healthy respect for the teacher.
Side note: memorizing and learning are, and I say this emphatically, are not the same thing. When you memorize you know the facts, when you learn you make something your own and you are changed.Failure, falling on our faces, accomplishes all three of these things. Tripping and falling flat on our face due to a pot hole, for instance: gets our attention, proves we were not aware of something, and creates a healthy respect. Now you have a learning experience.As for me.I am not done, yet. There is still air in these lungs and..
“ -a living dog is better than a dead lion.” (Ecclesiastes 9:4)