Failing Forward

     “I know how to fall! Not only to fall, but to fall hard. But I think, failure is not the worst thing in the world. The worst is not to try.”

      Have you ever felt like the whole world crashed on you all of a sudden?

      That was exactly how I felt when my adviser handed me my fourth quarter report card, saying, “Sayang. Konti na lang.”

      I nervously checked my grades and something caught my attention: 84. The lowest grade in my card was 84 and I got an average of 90.34. I felt my heart break into tiny million pieces. And so I stepped out of the area and screamed with tears rolling down my cheeks.

      I am not an honor student for the first time. My best friend told me, “Ella, stop crying. Your grades are really high.” And yet something at the back of my mind is saying, “THEY’RE NOT HIGH ENOUGH.” It may seem shallow for me to be so hard on myself, becoming an honor student meant so much to me that I couldn’t help but feel like a total failure.

      I was really frustrated. It was as if all of my sleepless nights were wasted. I felt a strong desire to just give up and stop exerting effort because it wouldn’t make a difference anyway. Then I realized that if I let myself down and stop trying, all the more that I’ll never reach my goal. After all, if I do not trust myself, who else will?

      There are moments that I feel I am the most unlucky girl in the world. But if I let that feeling eat me up, nothing good will ever happen to me. But if I learn to stand up, to strive and to work hard, then there is no reason for me not to be proud of myself.

     Recovering from this big disappointment is not as easy as you go over of what I have written but I had overcome it. My secret? I feel the fall! I embrace its pain, its coldness, its ugliness, its bitterness. Then I let the falling experience fuel God’s fire within me. I call this falling forward!

      I constantly thank God for in the pits of despair and failure, from the painful fall, He reached out His hand. Held me up and helped stand again. I failed forward. And now, I win! Because the battle is the Lord’s “Like a rose trampled on the ground, He took the fall and thought of me, above all.

      As what playwright Samuel Beckett said “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter what, try again. Fail again. FAIL BETTER, for failing is the only opportunity to begin again more intelligently.