The right to fail: why courage matters more than a guarantee

Ask anyone who has achieved something, and behind the neat success story you will almost always find a warehouse of failures no one writes about. Success is not the absence of defeats. It is the defeats that did not stop you.

The fear of failure costs more than failure itself

In a society where the one who fails is despised, people stop trying — and that costs more than any bankruptcy. For the undone leaves no trace: we see the companies that went under, but not the thousands of ideas that were never born because their author feared the shame. A culture that executes people for a mistake gets not fewer mistakes but fewer attempts. And without attempts there is not a single invention.

Failure as tuition

Failure has a quality that is hated and priceless: it teaches what success cannot. The winner rarely understands why he won; the loser, if honest with himself, learns more about the world and about himself from one failure than from ten easy victories. Failure is not the opposite of success but its rough draft. The only question is whether you will rewrite it.

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
— Samuel Beckett

My opinion: a young country needs not only those who have succeeded but the right to fail calmly on the way there. If we want our children to create and not merely repeat, we will have to stop asking “what if it doesn’t work?” and start asking “what will you learn if it doesn’t?” The courage to begin is already half the result. The other half comes from the persistence to begin again.