The sun had just risen over the horizon as I walked on what once served as the bottom of Weiss Lake.  I had just witnessed a glorious sunrise that seemed to propel me onward in my quest to discover some once buried treasure to share with my friends.  Like Columbus setting sail in his search for exotic spices I venture out into the deep and gooey mud on a voyage into the unknown.  And with each squishy step I feel like I am growing taller as I slip and slid across the surface of my new world.  It doesn’t take long for me to realize that I really am growing taller as the mud cakes up and clings to my unrecognizable shoes.

        Amazed at the treasure to be found on this beautiful day I turn the corner and spot this ruined boat drying in the morning sun.  I pause to consider this muddy and marooned jewel stranded upon this deserted beach.  Perhaps once this was someone’s cherished plaything but now is nothing more than rubbish washed up on some forgotten shore.  I feel a great sympathy for this busted boat left shipwrecked by careless hands because I believe I know how he is feeling.  I know what it is like to lose you way and find yourself battered and beat-up by the storms of life.

        As I stand in the soggy soil trying to console my forsaken friend I find it easy to encourage him.  Sure, you have fallen, but, who has not fallen?  Everybody makes mistakes.  Your problem is you have not learned how to fail well.  It is like surfing.  Where falling down is the first thing you have to learn and the only real failure is not getting back up when you fall.  You don’t drown by falling in the water, you drown by staying there.  There is no shame in falling because the only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.  It is defeat which educates us.

        Past failures should be guideposts leading us on to future success.  Let us look upon yesterday’s failures as an opportunity to start over wiser than before.  Some of the best lessons we ever learned, we learned from our mistakes and failures.  They can become a weight dragging us down in despair or they can give you wings to rise above the next storm, and the choice is ours.  Learn to fail well by always standing up stronger, smarter and more determined to succeed.  Whether we stumble or whether we fall, we must only think of rising again and going on in our journey better than yesterday.  Happiness is a choice; choose to transform your failures into stepping stones.

Something to think about:

• A failure is a person who has blundered but is not able to cash in on the experience.

• A failure is not someone who has tried and failed; it is someone who has given up trying and resigned himself to failure; it is not a condition, but an attitude.

• Failure is not falling down; it is remaining there when you have fallen.

• Great accomplishments are often attempted but only occasionally reached. Those who reach them are usually those who missed many times before. Failures are only temporary tests to prepare us for permanent triumphs.

• I’d rather attempt to do something great and fail than attempt to do nothing and succeed.

• Make kindling out of a fallen tree.

• No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep picking ourselves up each time. We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. . . . It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us; it is the very sign of his presence.

• Often the doorway to success is entered through the hallway of failure.

Thankful for those who have helped me up
Rickey Moore