Cold, Wet, and Dejected
Pax and I went to a local high school football game last night. It was tied 14-14 at halftime, but the second half got real ugly, real fast. By the time the final horn sounded, it was 35-14 in favor of the home team. As Pax and I walked to our car, we saw some of the opposing players heading toward the locker room. They were cold, wet, and looked absolutely dejected. It was 10PM and they had a one-hour bus ride ahead of them.
Memories flooded back to me. I can picture myself in similar shoes. Cold, wet, and dejected after a brutal football game. The last thing I wanted to do was get on that bus for the painful and silent ride home. Getting the snot beat out of me was anything but a good time. I can still feel all the emotions I experienced nearly 30 years ago.
Still, looking back, those were formative moments in my journey. Tasting defeat like that helps mold us into something different, something better.
TJ and I used to joke that we would someday write a book about Northern Vessel's success through the lens of failure. Eventually, after enough failures and even bigger successes, we've morphed into actually planning that book. When I look at the log of failures we've experienced together, the list looks exhausting. If someone just looked at that list, they could naturally conclude that we fell flat on our faces and eventually moved on to something different in life. However, the truth about failure is that it's often the gateway to real success.
As I look back through my life, spanning from those miserable post-loss Friday nights in high school to my most recent Northern Vessel failure, my life is littered with failures. Personal finance failures. Career failures. Relational failures. My life is filled with failures.
However, I can see through those failures and recognize how those embarrassing and dejecting moments helped shape me into what would eventually become some version of success. As such, I don't look back at my failures with regret, but gratitude. Younger me fell so current me could run. I'm grateful to younger me for taking those bullets and growing through it.
Someone reading this is in the midst of yet another failure. Let it fuel you. Learn from it. Use it to be better next time. Then, one day, when you've made it to the other side, thank your younger self for not giving up.
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