Failure or Fork In the Road?

"Growth is a change process that requires experimentation, learning, and taking measured risks that can result in mistakes and failures..." -Edward D. Hess

I don't know about you, but I make mistakes on a regular basis. I often feel I have failed in some way, even when I'm doing my best to avoid it. Sometimes I think my path in life is to learn what not to do by doing exactly whatever that not-to-do is.

I wish there was another word for failure, one without all the negative emotions attached to it. I loved what I read in the book, Three Cups of Tea. In it, the author says that in the Baltie language there is no word for failure. What we would call failure, they would call "a fork in the road."

So if I make a mistake, it's not a permanent roadblock. I haven't failed forever and ever Amen. It's just a fork. It's an opportunity to make a new, better decision next time.

Some of my biggest mistakes have also been some of my greatest lessons. I have learned and grown from them, more often than not. Looking back over your own life, where have your "failures" led you? Have you grown from them or have they stunted your growth? What lessons do you carry with you?

With each fork in the road, you have a new choice. Will you keep walking the same old, well-worn path or take a new fork next time? 

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.  

Robert Frost