The lack of success is failure. Failure teaches us a lot. It reveals our weakness that must be overcome. It also guides and inspires us to put in more effort. It reveals the weakness of our planning, and it gives us strength to act more decisively. It gives us a teaching for the future. Failure, therefore prepares a person to go for the next attempt with better chance of success. Like in J. K Rowling’s speech, she describes how she failed on an “epic scale” after graduation. Another example is the article,” Terra Firma- A Journey from Migrant Farm labor to Neurosurgery ” by Alfredo Quinone’s-Hinojosa.
He failed by not being able to put any food in the table for his family. Both of Quinones and Rowling failed but it was a mere stepping-stone to becoming a recognize writer and neurosurgeon. There is different types of failure such as, in the article,” Living in Two Worlds” by Marcus Mabry; this article is about failure of being null, being helpless, not being able to do anything about a situation. I have also experience failure. I have failed by becoming a mediocre student, but I realized that with effort, I might become a successful student.
As much as a successful author she might be, Rowling has encountered failures in her life. Like she recounts in her speech, her marriage had “imploded,” (167). She was jobless, and a lone parent. This period of her life was “a dark one” as she states in her speech. Your failures teach you a lot. For example, “Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected.. ”(J. K, 167). Rowling explains that her fiasco helped discover a new side of her that she didn’t know. Failure is easy, but taking action and making that failure become success is the hard part.
How a person deals with failure depends on their willing ness to keep fighting after defeat. Some people just give up and convince themselves that giving up is the best choice. It is not the best choice but the easiest. In the article,” Terra Firma- A Journey from Migrant Farm labor to Neurosurgery ” by Alfredo Quinone’s-Hinojosa, its not the case. He crossed the U. S border in hope for a livable income to support his family. Like he says. ” I was merely responding to the dream of a better life, the hope of escaping poverty so that one day I could return home triumph. Reality, however, posed stark contrast to thee dream. I spent long days in the fields picking fruits and vegetables, sleeping under leaky camper shells, eating anything I could get, with hands bloodied from pulling weeds-the very same hands that today perform brain surgery”(QH, 117). Quinones couldn’t support his family, and there is where he failed.
Quinones failed his family and his self. However, he was able to turn the set back to success. Like Quinones later says, “From the fields of San Joaquin Valley in California to the field of neurosurgery, it has been quite a journey”(QH, 119). That stepping-stone was the failure that leads him to his new chapter of grandeur. Like Rowling says, “The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity.
Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned. ”(J. K, 167). What Rowling says is exampled by Quinones story. He has gone from an immigrant farm worker, railroad welder, to a Neurosurgeon. All the set backs he has encounter has made him stronger. It has also aid him in the in his journey of fulfilling of his dream, of a better life. Rowling’s failure is but different from the failure of Marcus Mabry. In the article,” Living in Two Worlds” by Marcus Mabry, his failure is the one of being helpless in the aid of his family.
Mabry explains how he travels between two worlds, from rich to poor. “Once I got home to New Jersey, reality returned. My dreaded freshmen had been replaces by unemployed relatives; badgering professors had been replace by hard-working single mothers, and cold classrooms by dilapidated bedrooms and kitchens”(M. M, 110). Mabry feels a sense of remorse when he comes home. His sense of helplessness increases when seeing his family struggle while he is living a successful life. This kind of failure is the cruelest, the feeling of being null, not being able to help.
I have also experience failure in my life. I failed to my self by not exerting my full potential, and not setting any goals in my life. The only thing I ever worried was about graduating from high school. I’ve lived high school with no goals, just gone day by day until graduation. In school I always have fallen short of an A grade. After every grade, I will realize that if I had just place more effort I would have had that A, or that B. Now in college I feel no change, I’m the same person from high school. However, slowly I’m learning to become stronger. The lack of success is failure. You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default. ”(J. K, 167). Like Rowling says failure is inevitable; it is your choice to use it and grow with it. Like Rowling, Quinones, and Mabry, they are all examples, not only did they learn from their setbacks but also found a measure of confidence in themselves from the way they deal with those setbacks. It was mere a stepping-stone to success.
