I Am a Failure

            As he rounded the last turn, he could see the checkered flag. This was it, he was going to win “the big one.” He dared not glance to one side or the other to see if anyone was closing in on his lead. Nothing would distract him now. He glared straight ahead    as the finish line got closer by the second. Then, as if in slow motion, he saw the flag begin to fall. It was falling for him. He was going to be the first to pass under its black and white glory.

            The next few moments were a blur. He pulled off the track and into the winner’s circle. There, sitting on a table was the trophy, the bottle of milk and standing beside it, the president of the racing association. The reporters were there too, pushing toward him with their microphones in hand. One of them broke through just enough to shove the mic in his face and ask, “How does it feel for a newcomer to win the big race?”

            A newcomer? Really? He’d been racing for years, starting with the dirt track back in his hometown while he was still a teenager. Year after year he’d raced…progressing from dirt to asphalt…from beat-up stock cars to slick racers…but never able to break the jinx of finishing well off the lead in the middle of the pack. His name was unfamiliar, his autograph unsought and he seemed to always fail and lose, but he was anything but a newcomer!

            So many times along the way he thought about quitting. No one would even miss him if he never raced again. Engines that overheated, tires that blew out and pit crews who worked too slow, came to be the norm. Misjudgments in how to pass other drivers, overestimating the ability of his fuel to finish the race and a lack of nerve all contributed to him being winless and faceless. His name was a complete unknown. Perhaps that’s why the reporter thought he was a newcomer.

            What the reporter and most everyone else did not understand was, that in reality, he had not been failing all those years…he had been learning. Every loss schooled him in what not to do or what to do differently. He studied the driving styles of the greats of the past. He found pit crews who were as hungry for a victory as he was. He researched his engines and learned more about tires than he ever wanted to know. He kept learning with every loss. Finally, someone who had been watching, recognized his raw talent and gave him the chance of a lifetime…the opportunity to race for it all.

            He would not have won, on this particular day, had he not failed on so many other days. He would not have known how to win, had he not failed so many other times. He would not have been able to walk proudly into the winner’s circle on this day, had he not crawled back home with his head hung low on so many other occasions. He could not have been victorious, had he only been losing before. He won because while failing, he had really been learning.

            Some of you, or perhaps I should say some of us, are tempted to think of ourselves as failures. The things we have longed for, dreamt about and seen in our mind a hundred times have always seemed out of our reach. We’ve never received the notoriety, the “props” for what we’ve done and accomplished because we’ve somehow always ended up in the middle of the pack, an “also ran,” an unrecognizable “other” in a world that only sees the “stars.” But being recognized by the experts in our particular field or receiving accolades by fickle pundits is not the real checkered flag.

            You see, the hero of our story did not simply win on the day he finished first. No, he won every day he lost, but decided to learn. He won every time he refused to quit or give in to the temptation to call himself a loser. He won, not because of what happened on the outside, but because of what happened on the inside. He won, by realizing that every loss, embarrassment and misstep was an opportunity to learn. Don't give up! Don't give in to the temptation to resign yourself to failure. Your checkered flag, or as a popular song says, your "glorious unfolding" is coming!