90/100 Failure

90. Failure

It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failure. By far the best experience of men, experience from which they gain the most of lasting value, is gathered from their failures in their dealings with others in the affairs of life. Such failures, for sensible men, incite to better self-management and greater tact and self-control, as a means of avoiding them in the future. Ask the successful business man, and he will tell you that he learned the secret of success through being baffled, defeated, thwarted, and circumvented, far more than from his successes. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done. It has disciplined and taught them what to do as well as what not to do. And this latter is often of more importance than the former.

Many have to make up their minds to encounter failure again and again before they finally succeed; but if they have pluck, the failure will only serve to rouse their energies, and stimulate them to renewed efforts. Failure in one direction has sometimes had the effect of forcing the far-seeing student to apply himself in another, which latter application has in many instances proven to be in just the line that they were fitted for. No one can tell how many of the world's most brilliant geniuses have succeeded because of their first failures. Failures in many instances are only means that Providence takes to work an otherwise too pliable disposition into one fitted to confront the stern duties of life. Even as steel is tempered by heat, and, through much hammering and changing of original form, is at last wrought into useful articles, so in the history of many men do we find that they were attempered in the furnace of trials and affliction, and only through failures in first attempts were at length fitted for the ultimate success that crowned their efforts.

They are doubly in error who suffer themselves to give up the battle at one, or even two successive, failures. As in the military field he is the greater general who from defeat organizes ultimate victory, so in the battle of life he is the true hero who, even while smarting under the sting of present failure, lays his plans and summons his forces for a triumphant victory. We must not allow our jaundiced views to prevail over our knowledge of men and affairs. The world is not coming to an end, nor society going to destruction, because our petty plans have miscarried. The present failure should only teach you to be more wary in the future, and thus will you gather a rich harvest as the final outcome of your efforts.

Above all, do not sink into apathy and despair. Rouse yourself, and do not allow your best years to slip past because you have not succeeded as you thought you would. Is not the sun as bright, nature as smiling as before? Why, then, do you go about as if all hope had fled? Know you not that

"In the reproof of chance

Lies the true proof of men."

As in the physical world, disease is but the effort nature makes to remove some pressing evil, so failure should be but the methods whereby we are enabled to eliminate those traits of character which are a hindrance to our lasting success. As the inventor subjects his production to the most rigorous tests in order that inherent defects may become known and, if possible, remedied, even so does Providence, in subjecting us to great trials, discover to us by our failures wherein we lack; and we are remiss in duty to ourselves do we not most earnestly endeavor to improve by these tests?

The man who never failed is a myth. Such a one never lived, and is never likely to. All success is a series of efforts in which, when closely viewed, are to be seen more or less failures. These efforts are ofttimes not visible to the naked eye, but each individual heart is painfully conscious of how many of its most cherished plans ended only in failures. If you fail now and then, do not be discouraged; bear in mind that it is only the part and experience of every successful man. We might even go farther, and say that the most successful men often have the most failures. These failures, which to the feeble are mere stumbling-blocks, to the strong serve to remove the scales from their eyes, so that they now see clearer, and go on their way with a firmer tread and a more determined mien, and compel life to yield to them its most enduring trophies.

The weakling goes no farther than his first failure; he lags behind, and subsides into a life of discontent and vain regrets; and so by this winnowing process the number of the athletes is restricted to few, and there is clear space in the arena for those who determinedly press on. There can hardly be found a successful man who will not admit that he was made so by failure, and that what he once thought his hard fate was in reality his good fortune. Success can not be gained by a hop, skip, and a jump, but by arduous passages of gallant perseverance, toilsome efforts long sustained, and, most of all, by repeated failure; for the failures are but stepping-stones, or, at the worst, non-attainment of the desired end before the time.

If success were to crown your efforts now, where would be the great success of the future? It is the brave resolution to do better next time that lays the substrata of all real greatness. Many a prominent reputation has been destroyed by early success. Too often the effect of such success is to sap the energies. Imagining fame or fortune to be won, future efforts are remitted; relying on the fame of past achievements, the fact is overlooked that it is labor alone that renders any success certain; and so by the remission of labor and energy, disgrace or failure awakens him from his delusive dreams; but, alas! in how many instances the awakening comes too late!

There is no more prolific source of repining and discontent in life than that found in looking back upon past mistakes. We are fond of persuading ourselves and others that had others acted differently our whole course in life would have been one of unmixed success instead of the partial failure that it so often appears. If we would only look on past mistakes in the right spirit—in the spirit of humility, and with a desire to learn from past errors—it would be well; but the error men make in this review is in attributing the failures to circumstances instead of to character. They see the mistakes which lie on the surface, but fail to trace them back to the source from whence they spring. The truth is, that even trifling circumstances are the occasions for bringing out the predominant traits of character. They are tests of the nature and quality of the man rather than the causes of future success or failure.

None can tell how weighty may be the results of even trivial actions, nor how much of the future is bound up in our every-day decisions. Chances are lost, opportunities wasted, advisers ill-chosen, and disastrous speculations undertaken, but there is nothing properly accidental in these steps. They are to be regarded as the results of unbalanced characters, as much as the cause of future misery. The disposition of mind that led to these errors would certainly, under other circumstances, have led to different, but not less lamentable results.

We see clearly in judging others. We attribute their mischances without compunction to the faults we see in them, and sometimes even make cruel mistakes in our investigation; but in reviewing our own course self draws a veil over our imperfections, and we persuade ourselves that mistakes or unfortunate circumstances are the entire cause of all our misfortunes. It is true that no circumstances are always favorable, no training perfectly judicious, no friend wholly wise, yet he who is always shifting the blame of his failures upon these external causes is the very man who has the most reason to trace them to his own inherent weakness or demerits.

It is questionable whether the habit of looking much at mistakes, even of our own, is a very profitable one. It might be rendered of use were we only to do so in the proper spirit. Certainly the practice of mourning over and bewailing them, and charging upon them all the evils that afflict us, is the most injurious to our future course, and the greatest hindrance to any real improvement of character. Acting from impulse, and not from reason, is one of the chief causes of these mistakes; and if any would avoid them in the future they must test all their sudden impulses by the searching and penetrating ordeal of their best judgment before acting upon them. Above all, the steady formation of virtuous habits, the subjection of all actions to principles rather than to policy, the firm and unyielding adherence to duty, as far as it is known, are the best safeguards against mistakes in life.

Who lives that has not, during his life, aspired to something that he was unable to reach? The sorrows of mankind may all be traced to blighted hopes; like frost upon the green leaves comes the chilling conviction that our hopes are forever dead. We may live, but he who has placed his whole mind on the attainment of some object and fails to reach it, life to him seems a burden—a weary burden. To youth blighted hopes come like the cold dew of evening upon the flowers. The sun next morning banishes the dew, and the flower is brighter and purer from its momentary affliction. Sorrow purifies the heart of youth as the rain purifies the growing plant. But to the man of mature years the blighting of cherished hopes falls with a chilling effect. 'T is hard to proceed as though nothing had happened—to cheerfully take up life's load, yet such is the course of true manhood; this is the inheritance of life—the test of character.

Our world presents a strangely different aspect according to the different moods in which it is viewed. To him whose efforts have been crowned with success it is superlatively beautiful; to him whose life has known no care it appears to be filled with all manner of comfortable things; to those who pine in sickness and suffering, the unfortunate, and those whose efforts have ended only in failure, it most truthfully seems to be "a vale of tears," and human life itself a bubble raised from those tears and inflated with sighs, which, after floating a little while, decked, it may be, with a few gaudy colors from the hand of fortune, is at last touched by the hand of death, and dissolves.

He who has a stout heart will do stout-hearted actions—actions which, however unconscious the doer may be of the fact, can not fail to have something of immortality in their essence—something that in all coming time will preserve alive their memory long after the valiant doer has lain in dust. Such a man will not be daunted by difficulties. Opposition will but serve as fuel to the fire which feeds the spirit of self-reliance within him, stimulating him to still greater efforts, and, in fact, creating opportunities for them. And though, in the nature of things, failure must often be his portion, still they will nerve him anew for the struggles of active life, and endow him with courage to meet the further disappointments which past experience will have taught him are likely to be his lot.

Neither will he, in his efforts to attain some great end, to bring to happy accomplishment some noble work, be daunted by the reflection that he can never be sure of success even in enterprises springing from the highest motives and steadfastly pursued at the cost of all that is dearest. To him it will suffice that the end he has in view is the right one, and that if he is not destined to accomplish it eventually it must triumph. With prophetic eye he looks forward to the dawning of the time when, long after he has been called hence, posterity shall enter into his labor and eat of the fruit of the tree that he has planted.