Yesterday our Associate Pastor at All Souls Unitarian Church here in Tulsa, Rev. Tamara Lebak, gave a sermon titled ‘Faith in Failure’. She had a lot of great things to say about it and this is one of her best lines.
It got me thinking about failure in general and how impossible it is to avoid it. It’s also unwise to avoid it. I don’t mean one should fail on purpose, or just give up trying to do a great job or achieve excellent results in what one does. I just mean that the pursuit of success (which is not a bad goal) without the recognition that failure is a possibility is basically not living in the real world. Recognizing that something happens doesn’t mean you approve of it, encourage it, want it or revel in it. It just means you understand the world you live in.
Another thing Rev. Lebak said was that if you are going from success to success it might be because your bar is set too low. To really test who you are and what you are capable of in life, you need to have the hurdles be a challenge. And a challenge means you might hit one and tumble onto the track. Why be on the track if you aren’t there to challenge yourself a bit, right?
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily