The advantage of failure

When I left the United States for the Philippines, long, long ago, my little sister Nancy was ten years old. She said: "Write to me. Please! With my name on the envelope! So the letter is only for me!"

The trip took a full month - by boat through Honolulu, Tokyo, Kobe, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and finally Manila. The impressions were so strong that I felt like a stretch of wet cement over which a herd of cows had walked. So I wrote to the whole family, and not to Nancy alone.

She wrote to me, in her ten year-old penmanship: "You promised to write to me, with my name on the envelope, and you didn’t do it! So I am writing you now. I will wait for your letter to me. If it does not come, I will write to you again. Then, if a letter to me only does not come, I will never write to you again! Never, never, never!". . . . . . . She was really a baby.

The war broke over us here in the Philippines. It was seven years before I got home again. Nancy was seventeen. She had stopped school at the age of twelve to go into figure skating - roller skates. She was the amateur champion of the State of New Jersey, and was working out eight hours a day, in a skating rink, preparing for the national championships in Chicago.

I was fascinated by her training. Moving at an incredibly high speed, she would take off in a difficult maneuver, lose her balance, land on the wooden floor, and slide for at least ten meters. She would sit up and cry for about five minutes, because her legs were full of splinters, and the skin was off her knees and thighs, and her hips were bruised.

She would go to the coach and ask: "Why did I fall?" The coach would say: "You took off from the right foot. On this one you can not take off from the right. It has to be the left! Now try again!" Nancy would try again, take off from the left, and fall. The coach would say, "no, no, no! The take off has to be strong! Drive! Give! Get off the ground! The higher you go, the better this will be!"

This went on, all day. At night Nancy would be lying face down on her bed, crying, while my mother picked the splinters out of her legs. She was trying to do something that no other skater could do. But at first she could not do it either. She said: "If I can master this, I’ll win. My repertoire will be stronger than the repertoire of anybody else."

In Chicago, she won. She represented the United States in international competition. They were trying to get roller skating into the Olympics, but it was never accepted. That’s when I realized: you get to be a champion by falling flat on your face. You learn by everything you do wrong. You correct, and correct, and correct - until finally you have it. When Nancy had done that maneuver perfectly, a hundred times, in practice - only then did she use it in competition. But from the time she started to compete, until the day she hung up her skates, she never had a full set of skin. You get to be a champion by falling, getting up, and trying again.

This was true of Henry Ford. When he was trying to invent the automobile, the first "horseless carriage", he went bankrupt three times. . . . . He failed completely, three times. . . . .Three times it was ten cents on the dollar for all those who had loaned him money.

On the fourth try, he hit it! He changed transportation all over the world. His cars are still strong on the market. How did he learn? By failing three times. And three times he pulled himself together, tried to digest all the disgrace and shame, and tried again. That is how he became a leader in his field.

The classic example of failure leading to success is Thomas Edison, in his search for the electric light. He was working in a little laboratory, on the grounds of his home in New Jersey. He exhausted all his savings, then borrowed money from anyone who would lend it to him. Finally he said to his lab crew, who were excellent technicians: "Boys, I’m sorry. We’ll have to stop. I can’t pay you anymore."

But his technicians were as interested in the search as he was. They said: "We’ll work without pay. Then, when we find the right formula, we’ll share!" Soon, the techs were sleeping on the floor of the lab, and living on food brought to them by Mrs. Edison, from the Edison kitchen - because the techs could not pay the rent in the room where they lived, and could not afford to eat outside.

Then Edison himself developed a fever, but he would not stop working. One night, when his wife brought supper for the crew, she found Edison at his microscope, studying a new substance that he thought might make a filament. She said: "Please! Stop working, and eat." He snapped at her: "Leave me alone! " And she began to cry.

He was touched by her tears, turned to her, and asked: "Why are you crying?" She said: "Because it is so foolish! We have lost all our savings. The house is mortgaged, and we will not be able to pay it. We’ll lose the house. And now your health is failing. You will die in this. And for what? For nothing!"

Edison looked at her, amazed. His cheeks were sunken and his eyes were bright with fever. He said: "Nothing?. . . . . Nothing?" He picked up the catalogue in which all of his experiments were recorded, and held it out to her. He said: "I know. . . . . I know. . . . . .five thousand things. . . . .that won’t work!"

To him, that was an accomplishment. That was five thousand things that he would not have to study again. . . . . He found the electric light bulb. He lit the world.

And he knew that failure was the way to success. They had a lab boy, twelve years old. When they thought that they had found the bulb, this boy carried it from the furnace where they blew the glass to the lab where they would test it. The bulb, at that time, was almost as big as a basketball. In his excitement and eagerness, the boy ran, stumbled, fell, and smashed the bulb. The techs blew up in anger. Not only did it take days to make a new bulb, but they were running out of material! The glass itself was precious.

So they went back to work and produced a new bulb. All of them had the breathless expectation that this bulb would work. So the chief tech himself took the bulb, to carry it to the lab. But Edison said: "Let the lab boy carry it." The chief tech gasped. "He smashed the last one!" Edison repeated: "Let him carry it."

The poor lab boy was sitting on the floor, in a corner, in tears, because they had not given him any work to do since he broke the bulb. He lit up like a neon sign, and took the bulb carefully in his arms. Surrounded by the techs, he carried it to the lab, as if he were walking on eggs. In the test, the bulb lit. For Edison, it was a double triumph. He lit the world, and he restored the confidence of this little boy, teaching him how to use his failures as stepping stones to the service of all the world.

In the Philippines, right now, we have failed in many ways. The "Economist" has said: "No matter who is President, the country is on the brink of disaster." We have fallen flat on our face. We have gone bankrupt. We know five thousand things that won’t work.

But we are learning. There is no one in this country who does not know that when a man or woman is elected to office, they should serve the people and not themselves. Everyone knows that we must reach out to each other, care for each other, share with each other, live for each other. Even the grade school student knows that the wealth of this country is not money, or possessions. Our treasure is. . . .each other.

We are on the way to leadership, in Asia, and in the world.

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