Live and Learn

Joseph Sugarman once said, ~Not many people are willing to give failure a second opportunity. They fail once and it is all over. The bitter pill of failure is often more than most people can handle. If you are willing to accept failure and learn from it, if you are willing to consider failure as a blessing in disguise and bounce back, you have got the essential of harnessing one of the most powerful success forces.~ If you think about it, one of the most innate fears each one of us have is the fear of failure when it pertains to our personal and/or professional life. For it's not a good feeling whatsoever experiencing the taste, so to speak, of failing at something that can potentially become a lesson learned especially when it involves the following: friendship, parenthood, and marriage.

Without a doubt, a person can most definitely be a failure at being a friend or a best friend for that matter. I think it would be safe to say that some, most, or all of us at some point have failed at being there as a friend and didn't have his/her friend's back when he/she truly needed some much needed support. Essentially, it's the lack of support concerning a bad breakup, an accident of some kind, family troubles, sickness, spiritual guidance, or whatever the case may be can possibly cause friction to the point where the friendship is severed either temporarily or permanently. It's a tough situation indeed to be considered a failing disappointment in someone's eyes, especially when that person is someone you love/care about and see him/her not just as a friend but also as a brother/sister.

Let me ask you this question to all those who are parents, how many of you consider yourselves a failure when it comes to your own kids? Thinking about it, it's a question that can be taken so personally to where it scares you because one doesn't want to end up becoming one of those parents whose kids blame them for being screwed up from the lack of parenting being given. It's a sad situation indeed when children are either closed off, lash out in anger, seek affection, want attention by getting into trouble, etc, from someone other than their mom and/or dad who are too to pre-occupied with their own seemingly important priorities or just don't care about their child's/children's well being, which is something I've witnessed working in the childcare profession for the past 11 years.

According to the latest 2009 statistics for the United States, roughly 60% of marriages end in divorce and those who are currently married don't want to become a part of. To become a failure at marriage is an experience that nobody wants to experience and yet it happens to certain couples for many different reasons. Infidelity, falling out of love, pregnancy, mistaking getting into a marriage relationship way too quickly, etc. are just some of the reasons that a marriage may fail and if there are kids involved it becomes an even tough situation to where the kids are caught in the middle. In any case, second chances are rare these days when trying to work at re-establishing trust in a marriage and whether it takes months or even years its absolutely worth it if he/she is taken back.

In retrospect, failure is a part of life and there are times we must accept what we're most afraid of even when we don't want to. What it comes down to is accepting the fact we may fail and hopefully get a second chance if given the opportunity. Life is a test that we can either pass or fail and there are no easy answers as we have to figure it out on our own. Hey, we've all failed a test in school/college because we just didn't study for it and they're usually two ways we react. We either don't care or feel badly about it and oftentimes that's how many of us are when it comes to failing at particular situations in life. In the end, always anticipate the possibility of failure because we ultimately live and learn from what we're most afraid of to where one potentially grows stronger from going through it.