Pessimism is sometimes seen as a highly held virtue. To some, it is a reserved strength that eases the bitter pain of disappointment by avoiding the perceived pitfall of hope. How can one be hurt by a negative outcome if there was no expectation for anything better? Although this may be a safety net for some, I do not want the training wheels to limit my speed.

You might not fall off of a bicycle with training wheels on it, but you won't be able to fully enjoy the experience of riding either. It is safer to assume that things won't happen, but where is the joy in that? How can someone enjoy their life if they believe nothing good will come of it? I'd rather ride full speed ahead on a bike and feel the pain of a nasty wreck than to gently caress the road with my tires and be safe.

I do understand the pain of falling though. A crushed dream is one of the most painful experiences in life, and it causes many to lay out a safety net in order to avoid being hurt again. I tried putting out safety nets in my own life, but the self imposed restriction was a lot more discouraging than the possibility of failure. This restriction meant to keep myself safe from harm managed to hurt me more than if I let myself ride in the freedom I was born with.

Instead of looking at the wrecks I've had in my life and dreading the possibility of failure, I decided to take a different approach. What if I looked at failure as an opportunity to improve? No one ever went up to Tony Hawk and said "You fell off of your skateboard. You need to go do something else." Even if they did, he probably would've looked at them like they were crazy and kept practicing.

If he fell off of his skateboard, he'd look at the board, what he did when he fell, and then adjust. He might have shifted his feet a certain way, or adjusted the speed of his kick to flip the board differently, or a variety of other methods I am not familiar with. I'm not a skateboarder after all. I'm a writer.

We look at practice as a means of reaching perfection, yet when it comes to dreams and hope, we see failure as an indicator of a permanent, lifelong sentence. If Michael Jordan missed a shot during a game, which he did, his coach wouldn't kick him off the team and force him into retirement. Yet, we never think of Michael Jordan missing a shot do we? We never think about all of the hours of practice he put in where he missed the basket entirely, or dropped the basketball, or tripped over his own feet. It's a funny image but I can guarantee you he probably experienced all of those at some point in his life.

So why are we different? Well, because I think we assume that success is something that comes naturally for some people, who were born for it, but not for the average person. A lot of people today look at their lives in bitterness because they didn't get to do what they were born for, and look upon successful people in envy because they were "privileged". Some people do have an easier life than others, but where you start does not determine where you end up. A person with no ambition or dreams could be born in a rich home and die homeless, while a person who has nothing can overcome it all an become a successful entrepreneur. The difference between these two people is in their perspective. It's like the old phrase, "what you see is what you get".

I believe that if we look at our lives with the expectation for success, yet with the adaptability and wisdom that can help us deal with failure, we will enjoy life. If we have the courage to stand together, encourage each other when we are feeling down, and help each other to become the men and women we were born to be, we can fully enjoy the life we were given. Life is not about successes and failures, but about what we do when we experience them. There is no avoiding failure, but it's easy to leave success behind.