Noel Manuel
We all love to bask in the glory of our success. And very often we tend to relax on this success longer than we normally should. So much so that we forget to move on in life and this is where our success runs out of fuel and gradually slows down till it can’t actually move on at all.
Success does not elude anybody and so does failure. We all have our experiences with both. But while we enjoy riding on the success of our achievements it is hardly the same with failure.
Most people believe that when they are at the height of their success, they can’t actually come into contact with failure. It is almost impossible and so they believe. But failure creeps in like the ghost at night without any warning or indication of its coming.
They say that it is good to learn from other people’s failures. But until we get a taste of our own failures, it is next to impossible to regain success and sustain it for time on end.
History has unfolded a number of experiences of those who have learnt to taste success and failure. Both have equally taught us lessons from each experience and we continue to learn from the past experiences of others. But do the experiences of success and failure of others actually help us to learn something from each encounter of theirs. In some cases they do and astonishingly in most cases they don’t.
There are two reasons for this. We can’t actually learn from other’s experiences because there are a chain of events, people and situations involved that cook up the recipe for success or failure. They are very different in nature as to the experiences faced from individual to individual. Every person has a different chain of events, people and situations that occur either deliberately or coincidentally in a situation at a given time to program the results of success or failure.
On the other hand, the failure or success stories of others are mainly related to the behavioral pattern, which may or may not involve consistency, determination, labour and patience over a period of time.
These are the two reasons that make it imperative for us to know how crucial it is for us to focus and learn more from our own failures than to actually take a lesson from the failures of others.
Instead of delving on past stories, let us take a look at the very recent successful comeback of former Indian cricket captain Saurav Ganguly. The Bengal Tiger as he is better known rose from the pit that was dug out by his critics and for the time being he has given them a breather from scripting his epitaph. What a comeback, some would say and most aren’t actually doing so because when the tiger roars, the dwellers in this concrete jungle go silent.
While most publishers were busy preparing a book on the Ganguly that was, the Bengal south paw was actively striving to regain his form and eventually he has done so by tasting and riding on his failures and scripting the Ganguly that is to be.
What is failure? It is a byproduct of not being able to retain or sustain success. Everyone loves to succeed and everyone should also embrace failure. When we learn to appreciate failure, as much as Ganguly did, there is no doubt that success will never elude us in any given experience.
Very often we hear people spell out their own recipes for success. We do this and we do that to succeed. And behind every successful man there is a woman and so on and so forth.
We actually allow much of our lives to be governed by proverbs, adages and sayings somehow forgetting the practicalities of life. If there ever was a recipe for success then there should also be a recipe to overcome failure.
Failure, as most of us know it, often comes when we fail to appreciate and understand it. We need to accept it, study it and above all taste it to get the actual feel of failure.
As students most of us would be preparing ourselves with a positive frame of mind and a high degree of optimism for the ensuing examinations. And it is very obvious that each of us going to take the examinations would do so with an attitude of success. But at the end of it all, there are going to be a good number of failures as well. So does that mean, we don’t take the examinations at all? Or do we just give up on everything when we fail to emerge successful?
I should say that failure is an opportunity very few are privileged to encounter. And those who get the chance should take the challenge of comprehending it with patience, perseverance, determination and sincere efforts.
Children are good appreciators of failure. I was quick to learn about this when I was into my early years of teaching. There was this card game where children were asked to make a house and as high as they could take it with the objective of testing their patience and perseverance.
And though there were many who just couldn’t take it above the third storey, they continued to try and try and try. Perhaps even the entire day would have been insufficient if they were given the opportunity to build their house and understand their failures. What was interesting to know that each failure that brought the house crashing down was in fact a learning experience of getting to know the taste of failure? And every taste strengthened their determination and ‘will’ to take the object higher and higher towards success.
Though may of us would find it hard to agree but it is true that we often let go of our moral constitution when we come face to face with failure. We feel as though the world has come to an end and we struggle to lift our foot towards the next step. Did Ganguly stop playing cricket when speculations were rife that his career had come to an end? He didn’t do that because he knew exactly how to taste failure as much as he did with success.
Are the youth of today actually strengthened with the ability to taste failure in some of the darkest situations and challenges of their life? If we aren’t, then we are never going to learn to appreciate success and mind you, success will never remain with us for more than a flicker when we actually get it because we have never opened ourselves to learning and accepting the taste of failure.
noelmanuel@rediffmail.com
The writer is the Bureau Chief (Nagaland) of Eastern Panorama (News Magazine of the Northeast), Coordinator of the Northeast Region (Poetry Society of India) and Life Member of the Poetry Society of India, Phonetics Trainer
