What Does Accepting or Valuing Failure Really Look Like?

What Does Accepting or Valuing Failure Really Look Like? September 21, 2013

I didn’t find the political stuff here illuminating, but the basic point is sound:

In real life, of course, failure is sometimes just that: failure. Truth is, the current catalogue of pro-failure literature does not celebrate failure in all forms. We like failure when, and only when, it ends in victory. “Lots of people never achieve their goals; they do not achieve their dreams, even though they have worked really hard and prepared themselves,” points out Scott Sandage, a historian and the author of Born Losers: A History of Failure in America. “To believe that failure is only a valuable lesson if it leads eventually to triumph really isn’t embracing failure at all. It’s crossing your fingers behind your back that eventually you’re going to succeed.” Victory and loss are often beyond our control, whatever we might like to think about our ability to triumph over circumstance.

more, via Mockingbird; maybe we need more “A Boy Called Charlie Brown“?


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