OnFailure

 

"Fail. Fail again. Fail better."

This advice was reportedly posted on Samuel Beckett's wall beside his desk. Any worthwhile pursuit — gardening, cooking, drawing, writing, thinking, teaching, learning, ... — is never done to perfection. There is always room for improvement, a shortfall to correct, an error to identify and fix.

That's precisely what makes something worthwhile: inevitable failure, plus the golden chance to try again, and to do better next time. Living is like that.

Tuesday, July 13, 1999 at 06:30:31 (EDT) = 1999-07-13


TopicLife - TopicWriting


(correlates: OnSolitude, SeizeTheCarp, Joan Benoit Samuelson on Growing Up, ...)