Did you know that at this very moment something in your life has started it's journey towards eventual failure? This could be some mechanical part in your car or computer. It could be an internal organ that for whatever reason, has begun breaking down in such a way that after time it will eventually fail. We would like to imagine that the time in which this failure is going to happen is set for some far off future. It never occurs to us that is has any connection with the day that's already started. There is an idea about the Law of Entropy, which states that order will always eventually move towards disorder. Or said another way, given enough time, all things will break down. It may be considered a somewhat cynical way to view the world, however, there may be some truth to that idea. If you've ever experience something breaking on you then it can feel as though everything is simply holding on as long as possible until it can no longer sustain order and fails.
The thing is life is made up of failure. It's necessary for success. As I've mentioned before, there are mistakes that have to be made so that you learn a lesson from it. Without failure, we would have no basis for what will work and what will go horribly wrong. Unfortunately the lesson learned from either our failure or the failure of someone else doesn't make it any less painful. There are people out there who seem to go through life doing everything right, or so it would seem. To the outside observer it appears as though they simply don't make mistakes or fail in any way. It's very unlikely that anyone will go too long before failing at something. Those who don't are postponing the inevitable. I went white water rafting once. The river guide joked that everyone in the boat should get into the water at some point because everyone would find their way into water before the day was done. I didn't take him seriously and while others were bucked out of the boat or voluntarily jumped in, I stayed in the boat. Just before the end of our trip down the river there was a section of the river which was more treacherous than anything we had gone through before. The river guide told us to do everything possible to stay in the boat because you didn't want to fall out in this section. Sure enough the first several hits pitched me right out of the boat. Now one could look at that and say that regardless of if I got out of the boat before, I was going to fall in at that moment. Another way to look at it is that I put off getting in the river up until that point and in a way tempted fate to shove me overboard. What could have happened was that both mentally and physically I was focused on not falling out of the boat and in turn created a situation where there was no other option but to fall in. Then again it could have just been the rock we slammed up against that tossed me over the side.
The fear of failure is a powerful force. It can stop people more effectively than a physical wall. I've read that fear of public speaking rivals the fear of death for the number one fear people tend to have. In the end it comes down to people being afraid of failing in front of a group of people, which will lead to judgements from those same people. Failure isn't fun, but it doesn't always have to be a bad thing either. Thomas Edison went through nearly 10,000 experiments before finally perfecting the electric light bulb. Up until then he had 9999 ways to not have the perfect electric light bulb. From each of those failures he learned something and took that knowledge forward with him. For some though that initial failure has such a negative impact for whatever reason that going through it again is too much. It reminds me of people who won't ask someone out because they're afraid of being rejected, which will mean they have failed. In the past they could have tried and it didn't work and the feeling that came from it not working was not something they wanted to relive. While I understand not wanting to experience the pain of failure or in this case rejection, the greater problem is that never chancing failure means that you'll have no chance at success.
Going back to my original point, given enough time all things have the potential to fail. It's just the nature of things. Nothing lasts forever and even with maintenance there will come a time when something stops working as intended. It usually feels like this comes at the worst possible time. You car never stops working at some time that's convenient. It's more likely you find out there is a problem as you're trying to go to work in a hurry. In those situations one has to wonder why there weren't warning signs that could be seen. Instead it goes from fully functional to completely broken in the blink of an eye. I wonder if that's just how we see things. As I mentioned, the road to ruin has started today, we just don't know it. Catastrophic failure is categorized a sudden and total failure of some system from which recovery is not possible. I have a feeling that in most cases it only seems sudden. The failure was building quietly without anyone's knowledge. Well hopefully without their knowledge. With the space shuttle Challenger it was revealed afterwards that several people knew something was potentially wrong. When it left the tower there was a sigh of relief because the the thought was if the problem was really as bad as they feared, then it would explode before it left the ground. In the end it was an O-ring to a rocket booster that ultimately failed, which caused the entire craft to be destroyed.
We've all head that phrase "Failure is not an option." It's kind of ridiculous to say something like that. Obviously most undertakings aren't done with failure as the final goal. Failure should be expected. Failure is an eventuality given enough time. Failure should be avoided if possible and if not, then learned from in such a way that the next failure doesn't hurt as much. Our failures are what propel us closer towards our successes.
