Steven P. BarrettFAILURE'S HARDLY THE END OF THE ROAD; IT CAN PROVIDE OUR BEST BEGINNINGS (LINK)
July 10th 2008 01:54
Steven Barrett
I came across this poignant, but elegant story (written by Roger Simon) about failure's effects on young people in this country. He'd just ran into a group of young women (well, older girls, actually) who were the final contestants in the Miss Wisconsin pageant. It was their last best shot at making it to the Miss America Pageant. Far too many girls, whose ages range from just above toddler to 25, get caught up in these beauty shows and the resultsl for those who "don't win" can be devastating.
And while I do not wish to ridicule the deceased, especially a child, sometimes even the positive results, as in the case of Jon Benet before she was brutally killed, can leave us wondering just how much do these girls have to do to "prove themselves" and to whom, and for what reasons?
Surely, there are scholarships going to the winners and who can begrudge the positive significance those kinds of awards provide? And yes -- there's far more to winning these scholarships for college than looks, but let's face it, looks, and individual talent speak a lot louder than we'd care to believe. Which of course begs the question, why should only the "good looking gals" get the biggest scholarships, rewards, etc., when there are so many other kids working like hell to succeed?
Simon's story is really a parable about the over-emphasis on material and tangible forms of "success" over failure we place not only as burdens on these contestants, but also as symbols of caution to so many other aspiring young people. That caution message is really telling us that only a few will get ahead and the rest of us should be happy for what we can settle for.
And if the reactions of a few kids who believed themselves to be utter failures and disppointments might seem far fetched, remember what we keep telling our kids. You've gotta put out now, claw your way when you're young and strong, and keep moving forward or you'll just slip back into the rest of the crowd. Succeed now or pay the price of failure forevermore.
What rubbish--irresponsible rubbish at best. This kind of thinking only undermines a person's necessary ability to make comebacks time and time again if necessary. Just look at the lives of Abraham Lincoln (a whopping failure of a politician before getting elected to the White House twice) and Ulysses Grant who was a down and out bum before re-enlisting at the onset of the Civil War. By the war's end four years later, despite the press's howls about his "butcher bills" from his Wilderness Campaign in Virginia, he emerged as a national hero and was elected president only three years after the war, and eight years after being a bum.
FDR's New Deal was really one successful failure after another because he never gave up on finding new solutions or pushing his staffers to do likewise. He refused to allow the shortsightedness of others to pull him down and distract him from what he set out to do, conquer the Great Depression by any means possible, including the use of mere hope. After all the people had very little of that before he took office. The repeated failures of one program after another only served to goad him and his staff even more towards finding more ways to end the Depression.
Our country's greatness has always rested on the seedbed of past failures and lessons learned from them.
The greatest failure lies in the unwillingness to risk failing in the first place. And those girls who "failed" -- hardly so. They were far greater winners for putting themselves out than the many other potential contestants who just gave up and threw in their respective towels for one reason or another. But let's not sell those people short either. Rather, let's reach out to them. And that was Simon's purpose in writing that column.
I came across this poignant, but elegant story (written by Roger Simon) about failure's effects on young people in this country. He'd just ran into a group of young women (well, older girls, actually) who were the final contestants in the Miss Wisconsin pageant. It was their last best shot at making it to the Miss America Pageant. Far too many girls, whose ages range from just above toddler to 25, get caught up in these beauty shows and the resultsl for those who "don't win" can be devastating.
And while I do not wish to ridicule the deceased, especially a child, sometimes even the positive results, as in the case of Jon Benet before she was brutally killed, can leave us wondering just how much do these girls have to do to "prove themselves" and to whom, and for what reasons?
Surely, there are scholarships going to the winners and who can begrudge the positive significance those kinds of awards provide? And yes -- there's far more to winning these scholarships for college than looks, but let's face it, looks, and individual talent speak a lot louder than we'd care to believe. Which of course begs the question, why should only the "good looking gals" get the biggest scholarships, rewards, etc., when there are so many other kids working like hell to succeed?
Simon's story is really a parable about the over-emphasis on material and tangible forms of "success" over failure we place not only as burdens on these contestants, but also as symbols of caution to so many other aspiring young people. That caution message is really telling us that only a few will get ahead and the rest of us should be happy for what we can settle for.
And if the reactions of a few kids who believed themselves to be utter failures and disppointments might seem far fetched, remember what we keep telling our kids. You've gotta put out now, claw your way when you're young and strong, and keep moving forward or you'll just slip back into the rest of the crowd. Succeed now or pay the price of failure forevermore.
What rubbish--irresponsible rubbish at best. This kind of thinking only undermines a person's necessary ability to make comebacks time and time again if necessary. Just look at the lives of Abraham Lincoln (a whopping failure of a politician before getting elected to the White House twice) and Ulysses Grant who was a down and out bum before re-enlisting at the onset of the Civil War. By the war's end four years later, despite the press's howls about his "butcher bills" from his Wilderness Campaign in Virginia, he emerged as a national hero and was elected president only three years after the war, and eight years after being a bum.
FDR's New Deal was really one successful failure after another because he never gave up on finding new solutions or pushing his staffers to do likewise. He refused to allow the shortsightedness of others to pull him down and distract him from what he set out to do, conquer the Great Depression by any means possible, including the use of mere hope. After all the people had very little of that before he took office. The repeated failures of one program after another only served to goad him and his staff even more towards finding more ways to end the Depression.
Our country's greatness has always rested on the seedbed of past failures and lessons learned from them.
The greatest failure lies in the unwillingness to risk failing in the first place. And those girls who "failed" -- hardly so. They were far greater winners for putting themselves out than the many other potential contestants who just gave up and threw in their respective towels for one reason or another. But let's not sell those people short either. Rather, let's reach out to them. And that was Simon's purpose in writing that column.
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Comment by S.L.
The Political Brief
President Lincoln could teach many things about success. His greatest success followed failures and he was nothing close to a beauty queen! But he had all the "right stuff" inside where it counted.
Comment by Anonymous
What I first started writing in response turned out to be such a long response after I looked at it, and realized it could "stand alone," yet also complement the previous post about this initial topic that I've decided to do just that. Since I've got a tight schedule today and have two other posts (at least with Orble) to write, I might as well save some time time.