"Do not recall what happened before, do not dwell on the past. I am about to do something new; it shall flourish, you will see!" Isaiah 43:18
When we are young we are led to believe that our legacy lies in our
success and failures. And so life becomes a game, a sort of tally of victories and failures.
We keep score of triumphant moments and try to minimize, leverage, and rebrand the not-so-successful moments. All the while we hope and pray that the endgame will be to our advantage, and we will be proclaimed a big success.
But that is
only partially true.
Our most abiding legacy lies within the strength of our character. And it may just be an ironic twist of fate that character is best built and measured when we experience conflict, adversity, and failure. Not that success is without its test of courage and integrity. But when we fail— and we all do— we experience a profound moment of loss, which is layered and nuanced.
In failure, we may lose the game we are playing, our work, our livelihood, a relationship, a power struggle. And even more crippling, we may lose confidence, a positive self-image, optimism, stability, good cheer, which knocks us off-balance, off our mark.
Herein lies the test of character: in the effort to regain composure,
balance, direction, our footing. How we react, respond, rebound is a measure of our inner strength, our character, our fortitude, our inner vision of what is possible despite the outer collapse of what was.
~Karyn Kedar
