by Effie Moore Salem

Created on: October 22, 2010

Success and failure are the two sides of a coin, both follow  throughout a lifetime. Another way of saying that is  sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose, and neither being too ecstatic over one, nor defeated by the other. Both teach lessons, but its the failures that teach the most. They show up the flaws in thinking, planning, and make it necessary to revise plans and to observe more carefully. While success, if made too much of, can lead to stagnation and dry rot.

Success, to be truly successful, need to be seen as the next step in an overall plan, not the last word, or the plateau where  rest,  enjoyment, and adulation that success brings threaten to take it all away.  It brings with it other questions, other problems and how these are dealt with ultimately have the greater say in how successful the venture actually was or is. Time does not stand still, neither does life within. It either moves on, or it gets left behind.

Failure on the other hand is only the dark side of accomplishment. Wrong ways of thinking, acting, and visualizing the problem, getting all the facts straight, the kinks ironed out, is the stuff of shattered hopes and dreams. Scientists, inventors, writers, and all who deal with improving on what has been, what is, are on good terms with failure. They glean whatever lessons it offers, and they use these to begin anew.

Both failure and success make good use of determination. When one has successfully maneuvered through piles of research, data, and small failures and eventually is proven true - the situation with scientists and other problem solvers - then some thing needed, something good, or hoped to be good, is now available. Much has been learned in the process.

This learning is another small step up and is the positive part of losing in the first few rounds of an endeavor. It tells of other possibilities and may even open up new avenues of science. In essence, at what first was thought to be a failure, was not that, but a rerouting and a fresh start on another, related, or unrelated venture. Lifetimes are lived in this manner, and success and failure are as day and night, or at least they follow each other as such.

How then, in order to keep everything as equal as possible and to proceed on life journeys with less stress and negativism, and to keep the dense paths of the mind clear of entanglements, should we view successes?  With caution. It is possible to enjoy them for what they are, but not to be carried away by the roaring crowds, the same crowds that would be booing had their expectations not matched the acclaimed winner.

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