The Perspective from Failure

In Humanities this week David presented his “Teaching Opportunity” on the director and creator of Titanic, James Cameron. In his presentation he discussed briefly a quote that James lived by.  This quote is what I have decided to do my insight on this week because it had the greatest meaning to me. The quote was as follows: “Failure has to always be an option. Fear is never an option.” In a simple since this means that we have to be able to let ourselves fail because in failure we are able to rediscover and succeed. Fear of failure is what keeps us from the success within failure though. This actually goes really well with something else I heard once too. Fear means False Evidence Appearing Real. So when we fail we find that sweet success in the failure, but if we let the fear take control we will never discover it. By using this as his personal life motto, he was able to accomplish things that people at that time and still to this day believed were impossible.

Before hearing James Cameron’s revision of the classic saying, “failure isn’t an option,” I believed that to fail was to lose. Everyone would always tell me that failure isn’t an option or an outcome if you push yourself hard enough, and if you really put your mind to it. I believed them.  I am a classic perfectionist. If it isn’t right then I discard it. I like to say that I am fine if my ducks get thrown in the air as long as they come back down in a straight row.  I love order, and love to win be right. Although sometimes it takes falling to my knees and getting badly bruised I get up and go on. Sometimes I crawl to a new situation. It just never accrued to me that while falling I was creating calluses that helped in the discover of success. I guess my pride got in the way of my accomplishment and the rough road it took to get there.

Thomas Edison was a man who knew failure very well. He once said “I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.”  This man lived what James Cameron’s quote says. He was also able to accomplish things that people thought he was crazy for trying. This quote was a really great find and discovery for me. It has my eyes to the many possibilities I have if I let myself fail sometimes without think of myself as a failure. To fail and give up is when you truly fail.  All I have to do is look at every failure as Edison and James Cameron do. I must look at them and say, “How do I do it better next time,” not, “Well that was a waste of my time.”  It’s a simply choice of attitude. Once you have a “Pollyanna” look on failure you will always be a winner in the end.