What Failing Too Many Times Taught Me

Failing is guaranteed — embracing it is optional.

If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special. — Jim Valvano

I have not had an uncomfortable life. There is no life-changing event behind me that I share and tell you how it helped me find life’s purpose. But just like everyone else, I have had my share of highs and lows. The highs have been high, and the lows have felt pretty darn low. And as a matter of fact, it hasn’t stopped, but I am thankful for that. What I write here are purely ramblings of a no-one who knows that sometimes we all just feel fu*%ing shitty.

Good times and bad times, highs and lows, ups and downs, it’s all part of life. We all laugh, we all cry, it is essential to realize that it happens to everyone. Everybody goes through it even if they don’t show it. But the most important thing to remember is that it happens for a good reason. Those lows are what make us who we are. We need those terrible times to help appreciate the good times.

Those first times hurt, and they hurt like a motherf*&#er. Remember the first time you lost, the first time you got your heartbroken, the first time you failed, or the first time you didn’t get what you truly wanted. We have all felt it, and we end up believing that the time will never pass, and the pain will last forever. We remember them clearly, but what we occasionally forget is that we bounce from those, and we come back stronger. We learn to pick ourselves up. Whether it is by ourselves, or with the help of friends and family, or due to something completely unknown — we get up, dust ourselves off, and move forward.

Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up. — Alfred (Batman Begins)

This post was originally published on Medium in May 2020. Click here to keep reading.