Lessons in poverty: Accept failure
For the purpose of this post lets assume failure is ending up in worse shape than you started. Despite the value of a hard earned failure no one wants to end up with less money, a lower rank in society or the butt of jokes. Think about this. On the scale from 1 to 10. 1 being the least successful in society and 10 being the most. If you start at 5 and attempt to reach 6 but end at 4, its not the end of the world. You will recover.
Growing up in poverty its difficult to fear failure because there really wasn’t much worse things could get. I Accepted where I was and believed things would only get better if I tried to make it so. Regardless of your position in life one of two things are likely to happen if you take the normal route. You will have a major failure that has nothing to do with you, instead the system fails you (common in poverty). The system will continue on its normal route and you won’t grow.
Take a chance, accept the fact that being part of a comfortable system doesn’t guard against failure, it does guarantee mediocrity. Trying to break out of the system does guarantee failure but that’s the nature of progress.
I spent my summer working for Spike Lee when I was 14 because I wasn’t afraid of being told no. I accepted the fact that walking up to a random movie set with no prior introduction meant that rejection was a potential. Once you are OK with that, its amazing the things you can accomplish. As I said before, there are only desired results and undesired results.
July 15th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
Ejovi,
Really digging what your saying here (and last post). Kinda coincides with my Pastor’s series on poverty and what johnny long (we’ve chatted over email and will do something with him) is doing in Uganda. The crux for me are the fact a lot of my friends in the inner city (who are leaders) continue to make excuses for those who react negatively to poverty and engage in social bahaviours that continue to denigrate and further impoverish the spirit of these communities. I am with you in encouraging the young people I mentor to “break out of the system.”