Tag Archives: from failure to success

THROUGH FAILURE TO SUCCESS

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I like to take a cue from the following statement; “In most every endeavor overcoming slings, arrows, setbacks, and rejection is a crucial element for ultimte success” by Alex Dalenberg. It has been a common but profound statement that there is no royal road to success. Were it to be so, the earth won’t have had series of flat, undulating plains, plateaux, mountains, deep gorges and precipices.

The point I am making bothers on success and failure which are a common phenomenon in the life of every individual. However, I have to state clearly that failure as one of man’s many endeavors, does not mean that one is a total failure in life. Every person expects to be seen as successful and not a failure.

In any event, life is a journey through bearable and unbearable terrains that calls for the courage that one puts into life come rain, come sunshine. Almost all successful individuals have experienced failure many a-time in the past. A fact of life that is undeniable is that failures are not supposed to be the end of the road, rather they are expected to be sure stepping stone to success that can lead to an enduring legacy to unborn generations.

My half sister once failed a promotional examination. It was extremely painful to her. It turned out to be a spontaneous wake-up call to put in more effort at her studies resulting in taking the first position throughout her remaining years in school. That failure birthed success that followed her into adult life.

Oprah Winfrey started life in a hard way suggestive of failure in life. She braced up herself in spite of all odds to become what she became; a TV star for decades, now one of the richest women of note, as well as a philanthropist. Her early threatening failure turned into a situation of “Rag to Riches”. She graduated from the school of failure to become a celebrated success.

In business, Henry Ford, American Industrialist (1863-1947) earlier in life, tasted the bitter pills of failure before his business boomed in the Motor manufacturing industry. Ford Foudation is the legacy left behind as testimony for his enduring legacy.

Abraham Lincoln, an American Lawyer and statesman (1809-1865) experienced a chain of failures in politics, but with rugged determination and courage he got to know the possible causes of his seemingly unending failures. He has an attitude which I love to describe as that of ” when the going is tough , the tough gets going”. He became the 16th President of the United States from 1861- 1865. His eventual success included wartime leadership, unifier of the Union and abolition of slavery. Till today history has projected him as the greatest in American Presidents in history across the aisle.

                                    FALL SEASON IN LIFELEAVES FALL FREELY IN FALL SEASON TO STARTWITH FRESH LEAFAGE FORFULL FRESH SPRING FOLIAGEThere is more than seven after six. It is a local saying that assures us that failure is not the end of life. However, life is like a train in transit but has to stop for some passengers to alight at their own destination and still has to bring in fresh passengers whose destination would be ahead. When it reaches the end of the ‘to’ journey, it would return via the same route having to stop at the fixed stations for more passengers to disembark and embark. For seasonal weather, the cyclical journey goes into eternity. Human life is patterned into a mould that fits the train movement until it becomesobsolete, written off and scrapped. We are born to die is a common knowledge that man has been grappling with without solution. He has times of high and low tides in life, so, the seasons can come with hardship or pleasure. No matter what, if one does not allow the heat of sunshine Summer to kill or debilitate him one would transit to fall season where dress code starts changing to accommodate changing weather that will again gets more unbearable if one fails to adapt to winter coldness. As the season of harsh coldness advances it can lead to freezing if care is not taken. Unknown to unsuspecting people, it is cleansing the air of all dirty substances hanging in the air as rain falls. Debris hiding in sewage pathway is being cleared by erosion. By the time Spring season springs in, the air is clean, drainage is free of stagnant water which prevents breeding of mosquitoes and other harmful insects. At the advent of Spring season, life returns with freshness. Nature brings fresh flowers like daffodils and fresh lilies with poppies throughout Antelope Valley at the north end of Los Angeles County which gets celebrated. In other words, man’s life is full of ups and downs. It is only those who cannot re- invent or restructure themselves after a failure or disaster that would sink rather than swim across the sea of problems besetting them that do perish along with their problems. I join all American citizens to doff my hat to the revered President Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865) who after vicissitudes in his political career got vote to become the 16th President of the United State in America. The current Nigerian President was once a military Head of State. He was ousted but at the return to civilian government, he started contesting in every Presidential election and was failing since 1999 only to succeed in 2015 Presidential election. He seemed to have favorably weathered the political storm to emerge at the country’s ASO ROCK, an equivalent of the American WHITE HOUSE.So ‘Fall season in Life’ stands for just a chapter in a person’s life. Like the old folks’ song “Nobody knows the trouble I see, nobody knows my sorrows. Nobody knows the trouble I see, Glory Hallelujah: Sometime I’m rich, sometime I’m poor, O yes Lord. Nobody knows the trouble I see; Glory Hallelujah!!!”. Therefore, death is a means to an end and not an end in itself. Man can get to FALL season in his life and go into winter bitter cold; if he remains resilient he would be able to spring back to life’s freshness and buoyancy. “Circumstantial Homelessness” is a fitting scenario. (Ref: ValuPlus Poems: Focus on Behavioral Tendencies. Pg 24 Copyright 2008 by Emmanuel Osindele). In other words, at the end of a dark and cheerless night, there is always the dawn of a new day. 

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