“Too Dumb To Quit” is the name of the book I thought I’d write about my life. For some reason, not completely understood by me, I just keep getting up after being knocked down. Sometimes it takes me a while to get back to my mojo – but it’s always there when I’m ready to return, smiling and saying, “Hey! Welcome back! Missed you!”
I found these words from Teddy Roosevelt several years ago:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Roosevelt believed we should not be judged by what we are able to achieve, but by what we do while trying; by our attitude and our willngness. It’s the process that matters. It’s the keepin’ on, the picking yourself back up and trying again that matters.
You are the hero of your story. Never, EVER forget that. Even when you’re most down and feeling like the biggest failure in the world.
In the times when I’ve been down and felt like a total failure, I’ve thought of my life as Joseph Campbell wrote in his book “The Hero with a Thousand Faces.” Campbell used the Odysseus myth as a metaphor for our, more ordinary, hero’s journey – and the fact that it’s “ordinary” doesn’t make it any less meaningful for us as individuals. It’s the journey itself that’s important, and what we take with us from our journey that – oftentimes not until much later – provides us with the lesson, the golden fleece, that will enhance our lives.
In my case, I am taking the lessons life has taught me and using them to help others. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do anyway – to serve somehow. And if I can use the bruises I’ve acquired along the way to help others, and the lessons those bruises taught me, then the bruises have been worth the ouches.
Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun and one of the most compassionate teachers I have ever encountered, spoke to a graduating class at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. She titled her talk referencing a quote by the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
Pema expresses her perspective about failure much more eloquently than I can. *
“‘Fail better’ means you begin to have the ability to hold the rawness of vulnerability in your heart, and see it as your connection with other human beings and as a part of your humanness. Failing better means when these things happen in your life, they become a source of growth, a source of forward, a source of out of that place of rawness you can really communicate genuinely with other people...
The question is, are you going to grow or are you going to just stay as you are out of fear...?
I suggest finding the willingness to go forward instead of staying still, which is essentially going backward, particularly when you have a calling in some direction . That calling needs to be answered. And it’s not necessarily going to work out the way you want it to work out, but it is taking you forward, and you are leaving the nest. And that never can be a mistake—to fly instead of staying in the nest.”
So maybe I’m not so dumb as I thought. Life is all about keepin' on keepin' on.
Just. Keep. Moving.
I know it may sound trite, but sometimes you really do just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Eventually, you'll find you've moved on. Eventually, a direction, a path, will find you - and it may be one that surprises the hell out of you and makes you feel whole.
I’ve learned much over the course of my life, and I can actually now say I’m grateful for those lessons.
They are my gifts to use in service to others.
