When asked the question whether they would rather succeed or fail, most people would instinctively answer succeed. After all who wants to fail at anything in life? Jon Carroll does. In this article, Carroll presents an opposing view to the one of constant success. He supports the idea that failure is a good thing, and I would have to agree.
With no failure, Carroll says that people will never come out of their comfort zone or learn to do things better. Think about it. If every time you wrote something beginning in Kindergarten you received an A+, we would all be in the 11th grade writing on about a 2nd grade level. It takes failure for you to improve anything.
If people did things perfectly the first time they did anything, they would never want to try anything new and risk failure. Carroll shows this through his daughter who changed a trapeze routine that she had done flawlessly because it became boring to her. If we never break out of our area of comfort, we will never discover hidden talents or activities that we may have been missing out on. With failure comes new adventures and accomplishments that are important in our lives.
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I agree with the statement that "failure is a good thing" one-hundred percent. The idea that Jon Carroll expressed in his essay that failure is what makes the world go 'round is an underlooked idea. Not many people think that failure is in any aspect good or have any intentions of being good. If success is all that someone receives, then nothing is learned or retained because failure has not been there to show that someone has improved the information and retained it, because then that person would strive until they reach success. Failure has benefited everyone, it has shown everyone that what they are doing needs improvement and that they are learning in the sense that the mistakes that they made can be improved by persistantly trying harder, when that person or people try harder then they succeed in learning what they have done wrong and what they are learning by those mistakes. Failure, as an aspect known for its notoriety as a bad thing, it really shows how a person improves towards success.
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