Read this today from the interesting thinker and wonderful writer, Luke Burgis:
Yet we have to go through the thin to get to the thick. We have to watch bad movies to know a good one when we see it; we have to drink mediocre wines; most of us have to date people we will not one day marry; we must go through adolescence to reach adulthood. The key is learning to get better at identifying one desire from the other—to develop a hermeneutic or interpretive key by which to judge these experiences in the first place.
Luke Burgis
I love it because it speaks to the ordinary yet true nuances of the toggle-switch, Failing Forward rhetoric from the Personal Development Crowd (PDC). The thin, the bad movies, the mediocre wines, the wrong relationships — these are every bit the failures without which we can never move forward. These are the kind of failures that give us context. And context is critical in every aspect of our life.
Yes, I’m a believer in using the capital ‘F’ failures to move us forward, as the PDC preaches. But never underestimate the power of the ordinary.
Because when we come to the fork in the road carrying a bag full of ordinary life failures, and the Cheshire Cat’s eyes are staring inquisitively at us, all of a sudden, the direction we choose does matter.
