Daily writing prompt

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?

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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.

Daily writing prompt

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?

View all responses

I guess I’ve never thought of life writ large in such clearly defined terms. In specific instances, like learning to ride a bike or a language or measuring twice and cutting once, it’s been a matter of persistence and learning from mistakes.

Vocationally, maybe my time in the ministry came about because I somehow needed to end up there, after a few false starts and work that didn’t mean much other than a paycheck. Still, I don’t view that period in my life as either success or failure, or even a calling. It just… was.

And as far as success or failure as a human being, I find such stark categories to be inadequate and offensive, even as, on occasion, someone might be driven to think about a person in those terms.