In a column in college that I entitled
“Failure Isn’t Fatal,” I wrote: “Everyone fails. But poor grades or shattered homes aren’t
fatal. For, in the long run, the sum of
our personal blunders may well be multiplicative achievements. “My downfall,” Napoleon said after Waterloo, “raises me to infinite
heights.” How shall we feel when our
world crumbles? When those we love are
taken, when we’re ruined in our prime, why shouldn’t we, like to foxhole atheist,
shake our fists at the clouds, curse God and die? Thinkers from every age have wrestled with
the irony and tragedy of life. But the
bull sessions, papers, and degrees all become inconsequential in the anguish of
private grief. There’s much I don’t
understand. But I do know that He is, He
cares, and He knows. At the cradle and
from the pulpit, we’re taught precepts that give us the courage, wounded, to
fight. “When thou passest
through the waters, I will be with see,” Isaiah 43:2 says. “And through the rivers, they shall not
overflow thee. When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt
not be burned, neither hall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the Lord thy God.”
Stung by my experiences looking for work
in New
York City in 1977, I wrote an article for the Wheaton College Record. “Unemployment is a terrible experience, one
I’ll never forget. There were times when
I wondered whey I struggled and strained to get through college. There were times when receptionists seemed
like the cruelest people in the world.”
I offered some advice on resumes, interviewing, and the use of
agencies. And then I ended my article
with these words: “You’ll leave school with a sheepskin—not a rabbit’s
foot. Yet, doesn’t success in school and
work largely depend on “the breaks”, chance meetings, being in the right place
and the right time? Is this not
luck? Yes, but it isn’t the roll of the
dice, the toss of a dime. It isn’t dumb
luck. It’s that residue of design and
desire—unpredictable as lightening—that makes you fortunate. It’s the Matthew effect: “For unto everyone
that hath shall be given.” If you’ve the
talent and energy, luck is as sure as crabgrass in May. Luck is only the power of making continuous efforts. We only have to be a bit better than most to
get what we want. A
little smarter, a little steadier, a little more energetic. The line between failure and success is so
fine we scarcely know when we pass it.
How many of us have thrown up our hands when a little more effort, a
little more patience would have achieved success. As the tide foes out, so it must come
in. Dark is the night before the
dawn. More persistence! and what seems
hopeless failure may turn to glorious success!
The courage to win is the courage to lose. “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to
win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with
those poor souls who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in
the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat,” Teddy Roosevelt said
eight decades ago.
There’s no failure except in no longer trying,
no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own
inherent weakness of purpose.” Joy
never feasts so high when the first course is misery.
Most of mankind’s religions are aimed
at steeling humans for the ultimate loss.
“Do not go gentle into that good night,” the poet Dylan Thomas wrote
about his father,
Rage, rage against the
dying of the light.
We refuse to accept a static order or a fixed
fate, and societies that equate defeat with failure runs the risk of creating
angry outcasts that seek justification.
“Our business in this world,” said Robert Louis Stevenson,
“is not to succeed but to continue to fail in good spirits.” Defeat is a better teacher than success. It is a humbling and refining process that
compels us to examine to examine why wee lost and what we have left. As Miriam Teichner
writes, “I call no fight a losing fight”
If, fighting, I have
gained some straight new strength
If, fighting, I turned
ever toward the light
All unallied with
forces of the night
If, beaten, quivering,
I could say at length
“I did no deed that
needs to be unnamed
I fought—and lost—and
I am unashamed.
The great
theme of the Greek tragedies is the inevitability of defeat and our nobility
when we survive defeat. “Be untouched by
triumph and untroubled by failure,” comedian Carol Burnett. “Don’t be afraid when you flop. You’ll probably be better off when you
do.” It has indeed been my experience
that ever job termination has opened the door to better opportunities. In 1981,
I wrote in my diary that
“The cards are stacked against me. The only way I can compete to play by own
game. The rules of the game are
self-confidence, mobility, discipline, and career over all. I did indeed play my own game, and I played
it well. But in the hindsight of the
years, I now find that I broke all those rules with the exception of my
self-confidence. I never gave up hope. I kept the faith.
