We live in a world that glorifies perfection. I cannot imagine how hard it must be to be a teenage girl finding her way in life. My friend Maya is eighteen, just graduated, and is going to college in August. I chose these words for her to ponder as they remind us that life is about falling down, not always doing things right or being perfect:
If you don’t fall down
– Tenley Albright
you are not trying hard enough.
Nothing ever goes EXACTLy as planned, especially life. So, if you are not making mistakes, falling down, getting a bit beat up, then you aren’t trying hard enough. Becoming ourselves means trying new things and doing them badly. It means taking big leaps and falling flat on your face. And it means, there will be times when you doubt each and every thing you have decided to do…so much so that it can feel very overwhelming. One day it is all working and the next day nothing you touch actually goes right. This is normal. As psychotic as it may sound, life is not always about being and doing things perfect. Life is about learning lessons when things go wrong.
Getting used to failure AND being able to get back up, over and over again is the best way to become the person you want to become. It means NOT being afraid of failure, rather embracing it and then learning to do it better, differently, more effectively next time. It means not caring what people think, even though they will remind you of your bumbling antics, and yet still holding your head high in the face of complete disaster. It means not being afraid to do something new to find out if you like, it, are good at it, or want to learn more about it. Because, if you are not falling down, your are not trying hard enough! Try hard, fail hard – and often – and learn what you need to learn to be the real you!
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