Failure

Failure. This is one of the most feared and most respected words and concepts in the modern world. The fear of failure rules our every action and thought and commonly blocks the longing for achievement. This is how we live and yet this is wrong. We should never allow the fear of the negative outweigh the want for the positive. The minute we allow it to, we allow the bad to rule our lives and begin down the often short but devastating road of pessimism.
So failure is a topic to which I have devoted many hours of thought to as of late. You see, after 13 years leading into four years of high school sports, I faced a possible end to my sporting career this past couple weeks. The sport was wrestling and the occasion was the season ending tournaments, starting with Area. I had a wrestle off and if I lost, my season would be over. I wrestled with this idea of failure in the beginning and eventually lost my wrestle off. I could have easily looked at this lost as a final failure in a long career and allowed it to shape how I looked back at my athletic history. But then I chose to think again.
Before I continue, I want to give a slight disclaimer. I’m about to discuss how my faith stepped in. I happen to be a Christian. If you’re not, instead of reading “God” think “Fate” or “Karma” or whatever higher deity you choose to believe in. If you’re not religious at all, then don’t read this for an account of how I saw it. Instead, look at it as how someone can reshape how they feel about a situation, and therefore benefit from it. I’m in no way trying to convert anyone to my religious system, I’m simply telling of the factual way you can affect your world. With that out of the way, I return to the story.
I’ve always been told that “all things happen for a reason” and that “God works in mysterious ways.” Well I began to understand this over the last week. I started to look back on all the things I did as a wrestler and all the hard work I put into it. You see, the way I saw it, I had worked far too hard over my four years to not be doing better than I was doing. So maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. My actual wrestling and the things I accomplished in it is only a blip in the hopefully long timeline that will be my life. But the lessons I learned about the world and more importantly about myself will continue to serve me for the rest of my days. For example, my Great Uncle was a very successful wrestler in his high school days, I believe winning state one year. Winning state is the greatest individual achievement a high school athlete can achieve, but I only know that my Uncle did this through a small side comment in a conversation I had with him. He would go on for days about his wife, his children, his achievements in the workplace, but winning state was only a side comment in another conversation. In 50 years, no one will remember how I did at Area, or how I did at State, the only thing they will remember is that I wrestled and that I used the lessons I learned from the sport to achieve in the things that were really important.
The moment I chose to relook at my situation as not a failure but as part of the bigger picture, I was able to see God’s plan for me with a little more clarity. You see, I may have thought that a came back to wrestling my senior year to win, but it was more than that. I was meant to wrestle to gain something much bigger than a medal. I gained knowledge. I learned how to push myself past what I once thought I could do. I learned confidence about myself and how I can do much more than I may have once believed if I only devote my energy to it. I learned how to walk out on the stage that is life and stare my obstacles directly in the eyes as an equal if not lesser adversary, instead of cowering from it with little hope of success. And, ultimately, I learned to keep my faith. The past few months have taught me that God’s got my back. Call it fate, call it luck, call it God’s plan I know that there is a reason behind everything I do and that if I just look past the obvious success or failure, there is a deeper meaning. I have grown because of my senior wrestling season and although my career is over, I will benefit from the things I have learned for the rest of my life.
So the next time you feel afraid of a looming failure or have already failed the task at hand, take another look at it. Maybe the gold at the end of the rainbow simply looks different than what you expected. Keep the faith and keep on trucking. You can only lose if you allow yourself to be beaten.