Some people say, one of the greatest fear known to human being is the fear of failure. Others say you have to fail to succeed emphasizing that the path to success is paved with the distasteful aroma of both seen and unseen failure, true success is defined by our failure. They say "failure is the stepping stone to success" . Others believe you don't necessary have to fail to succeed, when you could just learn from others failures, then this set of people turn around to tell you that your experience is your best teacher. Alot of principles, philosophy and opinion here and there.
What do I think?
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
To me failure is what you define it to be, you could see it as a chance to try again, become better or you could just see it as the end. failure is defined by you and you alone. Its two things "failure" in itself and the "fear of failure". Both are powerful forces , they make you or they break you. But certainly no human being on planet earth has never experience failure except of course you are an alien. It's basically necessary for growth and development .
I have not lived long enough, but I certainly have a few experience of failure, of course they are really unpalatable experiences, but there is one that has been engraved in my mind both consciously and subconsciously and definitely come to make me a better person , boy I'm so glad it didn't break me. I had this experience as a teenager in high school.
Here is my story
I was pretty young at the time, but I kinda felt old , if there was anything that could be referred to as an academic success, it was my academic. Frankly I was brilliant, better than most of my peers in school, you could call me a local champion.
Now judging from the above by both my teachers and parents, at this stage of my life, I was asked to take what we called GCE in my country, yeah it's one of those exams you are required to pass before a smooth transition to the university (college) . only that at this time particular time, I was writing the exam a year too early for my academic level. I got registered by my parents for the exam which was close to two months away.
I prepared for the exam, but I should have made extra preparation for the subject physics, I knew this so well but I overlooked it, you could call it overconfidence, but it wasn't, it was negligence. The day for the exam came, I saw the questions and I immediately knew that it either I passed narrowly or I failed narrowly. The result came like a thief in the night and of course I failed narrowly, just a grade below the passing grade, whichever it was, it was still a fail. I felt terrible and devastated, to a quite a number of extent it felt like the end but thank God I actually didn't take as the end. I consoled my with the fact that it was year too early for to take the exam but still...
Now I know what I have to do, I needed to get better, but how? Then I said to myself, what if I actually finish the whole recommended physics text book. The problem was I had no physics textbook, can you imagine? and I wrote an exam. So I got a textbook, NEW SCHOOL PHYSICS to be exact, finished it from cover to cover in 2 month, my drive and passion was fueled by my failure. Long story short I wrote my exam almost a year later and I aced it, it was the best feeling ever. My failure drove me to success. Frankly, if I hadn't failed a year before, I will most likely have failed again when I was actually suppose to write it. I realized that failure actually made me far better. Therefore for me failure is ultimately how you perceive it to be, you can either allow it to break you or make you.