"Vivas to those who have fail’d!"
-- Walt Whitman
Having grown up giving cheers only to winners, it’s uplifting to hear Whitman encouraging us to cheer also for failures -- for people who, like all of us, sometimes fall flat. Or perhaps I should say seemingly fall flat, for isn’t success always somehow present with us, even though it might be disguised as defeat? In fact, don’t we have the best chance for growth when our spick and span lives somehow collapse, in small or significant ways, and new signposts spring up to show us new roads to travel? Can’t failure actually find us fresh ways to triumph, to take life by the arms and let it know who’s in charge? Perhaps I should actually praise failure when it comes along. Perhaps I should pay tribute to this new chance to choose growth over complacency. Maybe an occasional collapse in my life is just what I need to know a new truth, just what I need to walk farther and higher and with a little more majesty. Maybe I should salute my next failure, praise it and ask it what gift it has in its hands.
No comments:
Post a Comment