Dare Mighty Things

Disappointment and suffering are universal – yet most of us don’t handle it very well.  If we’re completely honest with our selves, it’s not hard to accept this to be true.  Most can’t count the number of times we’ve missed the mark, fallen short, failed.  

Who keeps scrapbooks of their failures?

And here’s where I spilled the coffee all over my boss 2 minutes before the Board meeting.  Oh, and this is where I dropped the baby on the concrete trying to hold her and unlock the car at the same time, while texting.  Let’s not forget the time when I was a pawl bearer and dropped Grandma…

These examples may seem extreme and goofy, but most of us keep a mental listing of times when we were not enough.  Whether missing a deadline at work, disappointing a parent, or being part of a failed relationship – at some point most people feel as though they have failed the test.  To make matters worse we insist on lugging around the emotional baggage of our failures.

Most of us don’t admit that, in fact, we’re pretty good at justifying our unhealthy attachment.  We can learn from the shortcomings in our past, but not at the expense of our futures.  In the early days of my divorce one of my buddies came to my house to see how I was doing.  I was a mess.  My marriage had failed.  I had failed.  I wasn’t dealing with it all that well.  Then my buddy shared this:

“Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”   Theodore Roosevelt

There is great value in giving something your all, even if you fail.  You learn, you grow, you get better for the next time.  But then there’s one more step.  You have to dare enough to try again the next time.  I recently read a blog post entitled, “The Truth About Self Love.”  The author talked about forgiving ourselves when we fail, and taking the time to care for ourselves especially right after tragedy or disappointment. 

Failure is an opportunity to learn, but only if we dare to get back up and try our hand at greatness once again.  We owe it to ourselves to try.  To our past self, who suffered the brunt of the initial disappointment.  To our future self, who will likely benefit the most from trying again.  And to our present self, who draws healing from the work of rebuilding and daring mighty things once more.