“The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.”
― Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture
Life is a learning experience. If I am not constantly learning I am more than likely not growing. One of the things I have been learning lately by experience is that to learn anything there are two things necessary – risk and failure.
The easiest position for a person to be in is a position of comfort. Uncomfortable comfort is one of the worst places to be in. It’s the place where we know that we hate the place we are at but are retained in that place by fear. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of the unknown. And thus we confine ourselves to an existence lived in the tension of what we really desire versus a day to day monotony.
In order to learn anything you must journey into the unknown. Your best move at times may be an educated guess drawn from previous data of those who have gone before you. Even still, you can not remain satiated in what is known and familiar.
I once read a quote that said, “success leaves footprints”. That’s true but so does failure. Often what appears to be failure is really the early buddings of success. Most would agree that definition of insanity is to try the same thing over and over only to expect different results but is it possible that some call it quits a little to early.
Take for instance the one who beats away on a stone with a hammer a thousand times over and yet sees no visible manifestation of change to the structural composition of the stone. His hope is for the stone to break but his constant pounding has seemingly not yielded his desired result. Let’s say that this man knows there is a treasure to be found upon cracking the stone open but after much pounding gets discouraged a figures that the treasure that is to be found is not worth any more of his time and he cuts his losses and walks away. He does however leave the hammer in front of the stone and along comes another man who picks up the hammer gives the stone a few solid whacks and cracks it open exposing the treasure within.
The first man did all the work yet the second man reaped the previous man’s reward. Why? Because the first man became convinced in his mind that it was insanity for him to continue his course yet his victory was not far away. Unfortunate soul. Had he realized that through his persistence the compositional integrity of the rock had been weakened he would have continued but he did not have the vision to see past what was visible.
Course corrections are the way of life. it takes discernment and courage to continue to move forward on a path that has seemingly yielded zero results but remember that your breakthrough may be just around the corner.