I am not sure how old both of you will be when you first read this, but it doesn’t matter, as long as you get to read it eventually. I can tell you that I am writing this in November 2010, when both of you are 4 and 2 years old respectively.
I have been wondering what advice I can provide to both of you next time when you grow up as teenagers and eventually when you step into the workplace. I am not so presumptuous as to tell both of you how to lead your lives when you become adults but I suspect that I know a thing or two about life to plant some ideas into your heads.
I concluded that the most effective way to do this is to recommend quotations to you from past persons stretching as far back as centuries ago. Personally, Papa likes quotations as the really good ones contain life’s best held secrets and being quotations, are succinct, to the point and thus easy to remember in your head (who wants to read long-winded self help books right?). So without further ado……….
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” - Theodore Roosevelt
Ok, I know what both of you may be thinking. Succinct and to the point?!?! Is this even a quotation if it is so long?!?
I will admit this is hardly the easiest quotation to remember or to even read. But if you can live your lives like “the man in the arena”, then regardless of how many successes or failures you experience, you will at least have lived life to the fullest.
My takeaway from this quote is: Don’t just stay on the sidelines and criticise. Have the courage to get into the fray and do something/anything to the best of your effort. It is better to have tried and fail spectacularly than not to have tried at all. If you don’t try, you will never know if you could do it. Even if you try and fail, as long as you draw lessons from the failure, you will become a better person because of the failure.
This last point is really important. Do not be afraid of failure. You may be surprised to know that failure teaches more than success. Attaining success only reaffirms that you are competent in your knowledge, expertise, skills or in whatever it is you are striving for. However, if you fail AND you examine the reasons for the failure honestly and strive to improve yourself in those areas you have fallen short, you will become a better person, thus increasing the possibility of achieving success in your future endeavours.
