"It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default." (J.K Rowling). How many people run from failure throughout their lives, always sticking to the easy way out to avoid the subsequent failure of attempting something difficult? Who can be bothered working hard only to fail one might ask? Or who would want to feel the negative effects that are associated with failure like sadness and the feeling of incompetence? That's a failure in itself not taking the time to realize how close from success ones failures are. Taking the time to learn from failure, to rebound off a backboard is the only way to success. What I know to be true are the positive effects of failure. .
Coming up short in a soccer tournament, feeling the pain of losing a goal and moving forward from it taught me the positive effects of failure. Our soccer coach finished off every speech with the same words, "Look up, get up, and don't ever give up." But this time was different. This time he spoke these words in a massive soccer stadium in Barcelona Spain, as the crowd roared cheers and banters in various languages many of which I could not understand. "We made it, we made it" was all I could hear from my teammates over the crowd as we all looked out into the stadium much like fish trying to swim on land, completely lost, as our small town home field was all we'd come to know. Our coach, as always went over the starting line up but this time was different. This time each teammate knew how important this final game was to our team and our country. Everyone acknowledged the top eleven players that would start the game and lo and behold I was on that starting line up. Nothing else mattered at that moment as our team huddled on the field before the kick off. We all linked arms like a strong alliance of brothers as our captain started his speech.