The Importance of Failure

Failure means not being able to achieve an intended purpose, a poor performance like flunking the bar examination, losing a swimming competition, having been expelled from school, being jilted by someone, missing an important deadline, incurring a business loss, or not having the opportunity to pursue a passion.

Physical or mental disability, drug addiction, broken family, loss of friends, bankruptcy, job dismissal, credit denial, imprisonment, and thousands of other happenings not in conformity with a person's dream, desire, intention, or expectation are a representation of failure.

Failure is a setback. It is a performance, a result, or an event that is away from the ideal. Failure is an adverse situation that breeds frustration, disappointment, doubt, despondence, fear, envy, and even ill-will. When personal failure morphs into this state of retardation, it starts to corrode the totality of the person and causes his abject relegation to human obscurity.

If failure has that vicious force to wreck the reputation, mangle the individuality, and destroy the future of a person, how could it become important? What is the mystical value of failure to a man's life?

Failure is the beginning of success. There can be no success without failure. Failure has been the potent seed of humanity's continued progress. Failure was the singular force that had prompted brilliant minds to learn from earlier mistakes and performance shortfalls, persist in their works with unmitigated enthusiasm, and produce outstanding works that up to now continue to benefit the universal community.

Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, Henry Ford, Franklin Roosevelt, Helen Keller, Audie Murphy, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, and Madonna, to name some, had suffered severe failures at different times in their lives. But as we all know, they grabbed and defeated failure by the horn, later delivering unquantifiable goodwill and value to people and organizations.