Meditations of an African Woman

Thomas Edison is one of the biggest failures in history. Yes that Edison, the electricity fella.

He had a vision ... electricity. And he had a couple of ideas of how to make the vision (electricity) work. To top it off, one day Thomas actually decided to put his money where his mouth was and begin the journey towards realising this dream.

Boy he must have started that first step (his first experiment) with so much excitement! Then it failed. But that was cool, it was only his first idea and he'd learned a little of what DIDN'T work. Mrs Edison still gave him support as did his friends and family.

Vision intact, he then tried his next experiment. Failed.

Next? Failed.

Next? Failed.

Next? Failed.

Next? x9,994 times .... FAILED!

At what point do you think his friends started to laugh at the idea? At what point do you think Mrs Edison started to politely nod her head as he recounted yet another idea that would take him right into the heart of his vision? If he had been a poor man, at what point might his wife have left him if he didn't quit this "electricity" malarky and go learn a trade that put food on the table?

And at what point, do you think Thomas Edison actually decided that failing was too much of a bruise to his ego to keep pursuing that light he could see ever more brightly at the end of the tunnel? As he instinctively and intuitively knew, that each failure gave him more experience, more knowledge, improved his odds, and brought him that much closer to achieving his vision.

We are all so afraid of failure. But it is a matter of perspective. With failure comes lessons, experience and the END of a journey that was not meant to be. Leaving you free to do another experiment, try another idea, make another journey ... having just brought the odds a little more in your favour!

Old Thomas didn't try the same experiment 10,000 times. He tried 10,000 DIFFERENT experiments, he went down 10,000 DIFFERENT paths. He failed and walked away, swiftly and without guilt, from 9,999 of them - with that vision shinning before him like a beacon in the dark stormy night.

And the 10,000th experiment worked.

I personally believe Thomas' Mrs had faith in him, and I think he probably had other friends or family members who did too (after all other inventors were thrown in mental asylums for daring to imagine the 'impossible', even Alexander Graham Bell kept his ideas of 'conversations through the air' mostly to himself to avoid the straight jacket!). But even if they hadn't, we'd all still hope that his vision would have kept him stubbornly failing until the RIGHT thing worked.

I am on that journey too. That 'I have a dream' journey. Stubbornly failing at everything but the right things, gathering the experience I need, and pushing up my odds as I go along. And it feels so incredibly, remarkably good!

What game are you winning at? What tests are you passing? Are they the right ones? Right for YOU that is.

Because if you have a dream, a really big 'un, one that no one has done before and no one can teach you how to do ... then your failures are nothing but a necessary part of the adventure of striving to leave your fingerprint in history. Cherish each and every one.

And dare to dream big.