The misfortune of success!
Success The Fickle.
The day we are born we are driven to succeed. Our reaction to the first earthly phsical contact cannot be anything but successful. The new born has absolutely no understanding to the nature of contact with another human being. New experiences during early childhood are usually reinforced as all wonderfully successful. Not until negative feed back of burning a hand on a hot stove or disciplined by a parent, is true success discovered. Realizing a hot stove is warm is at first comforting, but get too close and pain is a stern teacher. This brings me to the first of which will be a reocurring observation. A burnt hand is not so much a failure as it is the misfortune of too much success.
Life's Lessons.Growing up individuals are able to achieve more and more success through perserverance of life's lessons. Prayerfully, the majority of Life's Lessons may be harmlessly learned reading or in observing every day life. Experiencing lessons though, may leave one with what could be a wide range of life-long scars, both physical and emotional. It is through the learning exercise, we experience the joy and rewards thay may come from success, but we also find agony and defeat that comes from not failure. Society must realize the importance of both success and failure. And, if the word failure is distasteful, shall we say the misfortune of success. Either way, learning lessons are going to show great gain from both. It seems in the late 20th Centuary the society became too concerned with the importance of participating, rather than the concret facts of winning and losing. After all, no one wants to be the loser. I would dare say, few have never experienced being the kid that was not picked to be on the team, or not invited to the party. It is time we started teaching our kids again, that although winning is the goal, losing is not a tragedy. We must all learn the value of participating, but good sportsmanship, losing with grace and learning from a loss will build great successful societies.
Icarus: The Flying Man.There are so many painless Life Lessons to be learned. One of my favorite, comes from Greek Mythology. It is the story of Icarus and Daedalus. A father and son that found themselves stranded on a small island. Together the fashioned wings with feathers and wax. After putting them on, the father and son began to fly home. Now remember, this is mythology. Daedalus, the father, explained to his son, Icarus, that as long as they maintained flying the accepted distance from the sun, they would be able to arrive home safely. Some may already know how the story ends, Icarus is youthful and very excited to be able to fly, Icarus, instead of steady flight, swoops and dives. He climbs high in the air. What happens next is the moral. When Icarus climbs too high, the sun melts the wax in his wings and he tumbles to his death. Success, although sweet and joyous, must be correctly maintained. There is flying and there is flying too close to the sun. I end my segment with this question, "Would flying a steady careful flight be considered failure or defeat, if the result is rescue?"
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