Failure

Most people do not like to embrace the fact that we are all merely human, and as humans we have all been known to fuck up every now and again. It's the truth, people make mistakes, and in the words of one of our generations greatest musicians, "Everybody makes mistakes, everybody has those days" and yes, I wrote that from memory. But seriously, mistakes are what make us who we are, and without them, we would all go on living our lives as though we were the most perfect creatures living on earth, with no flaws, which is just simply not the truth.

Now onto my own personal experience with failure. Lets go back to 7th grade. I know many of us would simply like to forget such dark times, but I don't care in the slightest. now as many of you know, I am in the school band, and in the middle school the band teacher was a man by the name of Charles Seymour. This guy was probably the best teacher that the middle school had. In any case, in band there are not usually any tests, but on one particular day, Mr. Seymour was sick and not in school to teach us, so he decided to let us watch a video and "take notes" on its content. What this really was, was a test. We went along, helping one another out if someone missed an answer because the sub wouldn't go back in the video, and we got through it. No harm, no foul. Then the next class, it all went to hell. Apparently the sub told him what we had done, and he was not happy. If you can imagine how Mr. Bartlett would react to news like that, then you know just how Mr. Seymour acted on that day. He was royally pissed, at each and every one of us. So, in order to make up for this, he made us take another test, no help, no video, all based on our knowledge of music. And this is where the failure comes into play. I got a 45 on it. A 45 out of 100. When he handed me the test back, I felt my heart sink so deep into my chest, I just sat there and thought to myself "Well crap, there goes my future." It was the worst grade that I had ever gotten on anything. I just didn't know what to do. I had failed, and failure was not something that I had experienced in school before then, I was lost. Looking back on it, it was one test, that meant less than nothing to me, but back then, it meant everything.

I went home, and as usual my parents asked me how my day was, I told them the terrible, life-shattering news and their reaction really surprised me. My dad asked me "did you try your best?" I replied with a solom but sound "yes" and he told me "that is all that matters, even if you do not succeed, as long as you try your best, you will never truely fail." Ever since then, I have not been afraid to fail, because failure is as natural to us as swimming is to a fish. It is bound to happen, and the question is not whether or not you have failed, it is how you react to the failure and that you have the ability to shrug it off because life goes on, and if you get stuck on the little things that you have messed up, you will never be able to see the big picture.