Beyond Horizons

Failure is a short word that often carries so much pain and so little comfort, so much frustration and so little hope, so much stress and so little fulfillment.Sometimes we spend our lives running through our days struggling to avoid the long arm of this little word.

A mistake is a teacher -- it molds, harnesses, and polishes. Mistakes go hand-in-hand with opportunities for improvement, thus they are to be lived by and learned from. Without learning, what wrong we commit only drowns us in the despair of real failure. Our blunders do not hinder us from achieving success. On the contrary, they help us transcend ourselves. We can go beyond what horizons we can perceive now because our mistakes stretch our limits and urge us to overcome fears. Indeed, there is no moving forward unless we avoid avoiding mistakes and regret regretting past failures. We can look at life backwards, but we have to live it onwards.

The humility that is fostered when we trip and fall can lead us to higher aspirations. We
realize, from being humbled, that our notions of our current state of perfection are but mere abstract ideals, and so we gain the desire to find what is more than perfect. This points the way toward transcendence.

The trips and stumbles we experience from time to time are stepping stones towards thousands of other steps that lead to fulfillment. Pains and frustrations are inevitable; sometimes things just fall apart. These, however, are not reason enough to entertain thoughts of quitting or not picking ourselves up or leaving our spirits battered and broken. We take them as challenges to be surpassed, challenges that give life more value.

As we journey in life, we encounter crossroads, obstacles, and challenges that perpetually test our mettle. We often make mistakes. We stumble. What many of us fail to realize is that falling is not itself failing; it is not rising up from a fall that defines failure.