Embracing Failure
If "failure" is a word that can be used to describe a person, it can certainly be used to describe myself. In my 20 years of life, I've managed to do a lot of failing. My academic, social, and professional life was littered with failure, as well as every day of my full-time mission. I constantly failed to live up to expectations that were most likely set only by myself. To a perfectionist, failure is defeat. It is so frightening and so unapproachable that most of us live our lives in fear of it, carefully planning every step to avoid its embrace. We try to pass our lives by walking on a slackened tight-rope of pain-free success. We persistently lie to ourselves, convincing ourselves that this tight-rope is the "straight and narrow path" until we actually believe it. We fall off again and again but because of our fear of falling we can't bring ourselves to go any higher. The Tree of Life has never been reached by people who raise the...