A Flashbulb Lights the Moment,

But the Sun Shows Us the Way.

“Success is a snowflake,” she said. I was talking to the princess of my world, doing my best to ignore the day that waited impatiently outside our door. I had shown her the photo of Jane DeDecker’s Old Man and the Sea and told her the back story of Teddy Roosevelt’s famous statement,

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

In Hemingway’s Nobel Prize-winning story, the old man, Santiago, tries valiantly, suffers mightily, makes all the right decisions and catches the magnificent fish… only to see it eaten by sharks before he can get it home. Did he succeed or fail?

Santiago saw the snowflake. Hemingway saw the snowflake. Roosevelt saw the snowflake.

Success is that snowflake: beautiful, perfect and gone too soon, leaving only spots that dance before your eyes from the bright flashbulb of Life’s photographer. “Is it over? Did I win?”

Yes. Now go home. Tomorrow is another day, my friend, and you are not yet dead.

We live in a culture that pretends the snowflake will last forever. 

“The most popular books are manuals: how to become a millionaire in ten easy lessons, how to lose fifteen pounds a week, how to recover from your divorce, and so on. People always go around looking for shortcuts and ways to escape anything they consider unpleasant: ugliness, old age, weight, illness, poverty, and failure in any of its aspects.” – Isabel Allende, My Invented Country

Failure is not a flashbulb but the sun, lighting the way, revealing our mistakes, a loving teacher that causes the snowflake to sparkle beautifully as it falls.

Have you been afraid of Failure? Don’t be. Tom Peters, that Dean of Worldwide Business Consultants, says, “Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes.”

Think of risky undertakings as “experiments.” Regardless of whether your experiment succeeds or fails, you’re going to learn something useful. And as Life’s photographer told you, “Tomorrow is another day, my friend, and you are not yet dead.”

Roy H. Williams