Failure Is Not An Option, It’s Mandatory
A maxim that I live by.
I have a friend who is a Cold War Army veteran. He worked with nuclear weapons in the 80s, when the threat of nuclear annihilation was real. He’s a wickedly intelligent man, well-versed in history (particularly military history) and with a fairly broad scientific knowledge base. He spent a significant amount of his life in the Army, after which he applied his knowledge of explosives in a variety of roles supporting various police forces.
I don’t have his permission to talk much about his life, so I’m going to leave it there for now. He’s a fascinating man, and I hope to do a biographical piece or two about him, but that’s a thing for later.
However, he’s my source for all things military knowledge, an area that I have had little experience with. My uncle was in the Army for quite a while, retiring only recently from the Army band, but he never talked about it, and now I don’t talk to any of my family. My father was always of the opinion that there were better things for me than the army, but that the discipline might be good for me regardless.
(I found out later that, having taken psychiatric meds since the age of 12 for depression and suicidal thoughts, no military branch would accept me anyway.)
One of the things that my friend told me about was Challenge Coins. They’re coins or medallions that show some sort of membership or achievement, often presented by military and police types, but available from all sorts of places. That is a drastic oversimplification of them, so do some research on your own if you’re curious.
After going through a very difficult time in our lives, my partner and I were sitting around his table talking, as we often do. I had been talking about how, even though my life was full of failure at the time, I didn’t want to let that stop me. I think I quoted the “I haven’t failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that don’t work,” which is often attributed to Thomas Edison.
My friend, always a source of advice and inspiration, took a left turn and started explaining challenge coins to me. Eventually, after giving me the basic rundown, he produced a couple of them that he kept in his wallet. One was from his Army service, but another was from, of all things, a webcomic he follows called Schlock Mercenary.
As I mentioned, my friend is a military history buff, and having spent so much time in service, he appreciated that particular webcomic’s attention to detail when it came to military-type matters. He never hesitated to buy the latest volume of the comic’s books when they came out, as he liked supporting the creator.
One of the aspects of this comic is a list of the “Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries.” These are just what they sound like: maxims that help mercenaries and military types be more effective. One of my particular favorites is #43: If it’s stupid and it works, it’s still stupid and you’re lucky.
That said, the coin he showed me contained Maxim #70. That particular Maxim has become my motto, and it goes as follows:
Failure is not an option. It’s mandatory. The option is whether or not to let failure be the last thing you do.
This maxim encompasses a number of viewpoints that I hold in an incredibly compact and catchy 22 words:
- Failure is an inescapable part of doing things.
- There is no shame in failure since it happens to everyone.
- While you can’t always control whether you get another chance, failure should not stop you from doing those things if you can try again.
- Learning from your failure should be a part of the process.
My friend allowed me to keep that particular coin. I gladly did, and it has lived in my wallet ever since. I will periodically take it out to remind myself to keep pushing forward through my failures. You may not always get another shot, but you shouldn’t let failure be the reason for that.
This article is a response to the Write Here week three writing prompts on Creators Hub. Yeah, I know it’s late, sue me.
If you liked this, please subscribe to my publication, Thing a Day. I publish something every day on a variety of topics, so you never know what you’re going to see!
Here are some other things I’ve written:
