I was moved by our school director’s message when she shared her life story during her birthday. She emphasized that in life, we sometimes succeed and sometimes fail.
Failure is one of the most unwanted, ignored, and most avoided subject. It means lack of success or the inability to meet an expectation. They say that the life’s three best teachers are heart-breaks, empty pockets, and failures. This might be a tough pill to swallow but let us accept the fact that no one leaves Earth without experiencing failure.
We face failure in different aspects of our life and it varies in several ways. We experience failure in the family, school, church, in the workplace, and even our self. In the family, a person may fail to do their part as the husband, as the wife, as the sister, or as the brother. In school, failure would mean receiving a failing grade and as a consequence, students need to repeat the subject. In church, sometimes we act the opposite of what we believe and preach. We fail to be a true Christian. In the workplace, people fail to do their task in a manner worthy of their job description. Yet among these areas, the issue on failing ourselves must also be taken into account. We fail ourselves if we put too much expectation.
How does a husband or a wife deal with their marriage that failed? How do students deal with failed subjects? How do citizens deal with failures in the workplace? Most of all, we should ask this: How should we deal with failures?
It is unfortunate that ‘failure management’ is not taught in school. Many are depressed and some commit suicide because of “fear of failure”. Some people fear that if they fail others, it makes them a lesser individual. Even so, most of us still choose sunshine over the rain.
I believe the reasons why failures are not dealt with are our camouflaged excuses and our refusal to accept. We hate failures because we always want to impress others and because of that, we tend to make excuses why we fail. We must accept that failures will always be part of life. People must understand that these failures, no matter the severity of it, we must still move forward in life and take the lessons from our failures as our strength to face tomorrow.
As Winston Churchill said, “Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” (RITA B. MATIAS)
April 27, 2024
