Failure is the price of greatness. I love the Teddy Roosevelt quote “Man in the Arena.”
To paraphrase it, it is, respect belongs not to the critic, not to the person in the bleachers, not to the audience. Respect and admiration belongs to the person in the arena who has the dream, who has the vision, who rolls up her sleeves and has the guts to get the vision done.
Anyone can be a critic, and here’s what I’ve realized. Critics generally criticize the work they most wish they did. My invitation to you is simply remember a lesson life has taught me, which is failure is the price of greatness, adversity is the price of ambition. I would rather get to the end of my life bloodied and marred and scarred and say I didn’t spend the best years of my life chit chatting around the water cooler, I didn’t spend the best hours of my best days condemning and criticizing and being a naysayer. I spent the best years of my life gloriously standing in the fire of ideals, my goals, and trying to get what my heart’s desires said I should do done, even though I fell and I was bloodied and I was laughed at and I was criticized, sometimes hated, and people tried to tear me down. That, to me, is what life is all about.
I think I should probably end on that invitation to you. Get your dreams done, because the world will be a better place because you were in it. That is my prayer for the rest of your life.
