Is It That Bad to Fail?

“It is sometimes a mistake to climb; it is always a mistake never even to make the attempt. If you do not climb, you will not fall. This is true. But is it that bad to fail, that hard to fall?” – Neil Gaiman

I think failure is not the opposite of success. No. Failure is a stepping stone to success. An integral part of success. We learn so much from failure, and not nearly enough from success.

And, yet, most people are afraid of failure. Are you one of them? Why?

Our struggles become our strengths. There’s no way around it. Of course, you can spend your life avoiding suffering, pain, failure, but isn’t that going to break your heart regardless? Won’t it make you feel small, insignificant, empty, dumb? Isn’t that going to make you feel as if there’s this invisible wall between you and the rest of the world?

Avoiding failure… isn’t that going to make you feel as if you’ve lost something that you never even knew you had? As if missing someone you never met?

Avoiding failure… becoming nostalgic for all the chances you did not take, isn’t that going to make you despise silence, despise the face you see in the mirror?

What are you going to do then?

Buy a gun? Stop looking yourself in the mirror?

Do not go quiet into that good night…

And remember this: you aren’t a failure because you have failed. No. You only become a failure if you quit or if you blame someone else.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” ― Theodore Roosevelt

Assume responsibility. Become the captain of your soul. The master of your fate. Do what you’ve always wanted to do. Be free, relentless, passionate.

Change the world inside your heart and the world around you will also change.

And never forget: you can’t beat a person who never gives up.