I’m having trouble zeroing in on an example of this– not that there haven’t been failures along the way– but nothing specific is coming to mind where failure led to success. I guess in a more generic sense, from the perspective of an institutional failure, the closure of a place where I worked and the subsequent need to engage in further training so I could stay employed and earn a paycheck led to the best job I ever had and a growing feeling that I was ready to take on more responsibility, which in turn led to leaving town for seminary and 26 years as an ordained minister.
Apart from that whole process, I have failed from time to time to interpret signals and listen to my wife, and that is a lesson I sadly continue to learn. It’s always been unclear what success looks like, in this case. As Winston Churchill once put it– in a different context– it’s been more of a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.
3 Cents' 