…Failure Is An Option

12/1/2010. 10:50 PM

Today I realized my fear of failure is more influential than I want to acknowledge.

I know my emotional struggles need to checked when they become a nuisance to my tangible life. The emotional world has collided with the physical world, and in this case the casualties are opportunities.

Most of the time I am a master at this never-ending game of charades we as human beings tend to play, where we only act out what we want others to guess. I am really adept at hiding my true feelings, letting them sit in my mind on pedestals like a museum only I will visit. Very rarely do these emotional artifacts escape into my hands to effect my actions. But today they did in the form of apprehension rooted in not wanting to fail.

I don’t think there is a soul on earth, above or below it that is elated at the prospect of failure. No one wakes in the morning thinking, “Man, I cannot wait to see what I am going to screw up today!” Children don’t go to bed at night dreaming of one day becoming the biggest failure to ever live.

Failure is not fun. We know this. So we bar its conception through idling. We cannot fail at something if we did not try it in the first place. But in the midst of our discovery of what we think is a clever loophole out of the realm of failure we miss something great.

That loophole is not only a passage out of failure, but a passage into a tragically, regrettably ordinary and safe life.

While we were busy avoiding failure, we have avoided success.

Go for it.

“Course He isn’t safe. But He’s good.” – C.S. Lewis on God