Jenny--
I just re-read your blog -- it has been a hectic busy time since leaving CB, so I haven't been able to write back. I did try on the blog itself but then seemed to lose it in the ether when I thought I was saving it to your blog section. I hate losing words just by hitting a wrong key.
Anyway, you are so right and as usual so inspiring about pressing on through failure. I do not think you have to be ruled by never letting failure stop you, even in front of your children. My father was incredibly successful in public service, going so far as to be a Deputy Director of the CIA, but he did not succeed always...yet he was a person of such high personal character that he was respected by everyone and an inspiration to two generations who followed him. And he did not let one failure stop him...he kept on. I do not think "failure" is the right word in most cases and certainly not where anything you do or try is concerned. Lack of success is a better description, as failure is way too harsh a word...after all, nobody thinks of a climber as a failure simply because they do not make it up a peak. It took me five tries to make it up Mount Wilson, and three to get up Capitol Peak when I did it the second time.
I was so inspired by my father, because he was always "right" in his motivation and guiding principles. He was a person of Jesus or a true part of what I hope and believe God stands for or is -- without ever having to mention either of their names, let alone invoke their names or even set foot in church on any regular basis.
I cannot help but believe that you will always be an inspiration to your children...even if it takes ten attempts to pass that real estate test...or even if the goal eludes you. Of course, it will not elude you. You will pass it, and it will mean so much when you do.
You blog is so good because you have let loose your frustration with "failure"; others, me included, can relate to it. There is God's purpose in everything, even lack of success in something where hard work and perseverance deserve a better outcome. There is an old English saying, by someone famous I believe, "It's an ill wind that blows no good." And the good in what you are upset about is that you have tried so hard. It is easy to do easy things; you are not doing an easy thing. You are not doing something that is easy for you. It is your own personal "Mount Everest". No one can fail to admire that.
This was his email to me. This next part is from a whole inspirational collective that I have previously written... Please be inspired! Oh, and I passed my test! Took me 4 tries, but that 4th one I PASSED! :)
The Mountains in the Distance
He is a small older man who walks not with a normal walking cane,
but with his hiking poles that once helped to propel him up towering mountain
passes. His hands are beginning to turn as arthritis is taking its swing.
As he travels through his small apartment that is beaming with bright
colors of yellow and red his oxygen tubing travels with him. He can take you on
the most inspiring adventures as he pulls up photos from peaks of mountains to
valleys probably never looked upon by another person. His photos speak
volumes as you climb the small staircase that rises to his garage apartment and
gaze through his eyes upon peaks covered in snow and dusted with clouds. As
another picture of a small Asian child sitting in a boat catches your eye, you
must ask, Who is this man?
He is not a poor man, but a man who has grown up drinking fine
bottles of wine that came from his own vineyards. His daughters live
abroad and were married in his castle, a true princess wedding. But now what
does he do when he can barely climb the stairs in his garage apartment where he
has come for so many years in order to escape into the mountains?
His words...
The Universe Turned Upside Down
It is late on the overnight flight home from San Francisco,
And a fragment of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony,
Unexpected on airline headphones,
Has me pause from restless half sleep
To think instead of trying to hold
The excitement and promise of years
Now gone four decades and more,
Tempered by the momentary return
Of their companions – uncertainty, pain, and doubt.
How can I accept that being young
Exists now only in my mind ?
Why am I so torn
When others, outwardly at least,
Seem unconcerned
That those years of starlight and storm
Are gone forever ?...”
Written
on United Flight 792
San
Francisco to Washington, DC
November
3-4, 2010
My sweet friend, he gives me such inspiration. Yes, there
are years that he cannot reach out and touch anymore; years of friendship and
love, of travels and adventures. His journey has been filled to the brim
with great adventures, but his thirty plus surgeries have tried to bind him in
chains; chains that never stopped him, but chains that left him with another
mountain to climb.
His poetic reference as he thinks of yet another surgery...
“Bounded by the movement of my eyes in a head firmly secured.
The reach of my voice, and the range of my left arm only.
And yet, outside that terror is the person those faces must see
As I must be-a smile, banter, hope, and determination
To climb a mountain higher than I’ve climbed before,
With bravery shown but masking its complete absence,
Amidst the thunderclaps of dependence, the fear of abandonment.
And the unfamiliar unknown…”
Did you see it? And yet, outside that terror is the person
those faces must see… a smile, banter, hope, and determination. After
waking up from surgery and discovering that his arm and shoulder were paralyzed
my friend thought not of the despair he felt underneath, but of how to be brave
despite it, to take it as one more challenge to overcome, not a challenge that
would overcome him. His thoughts are directed to his daughter and the joy
of her new engagement, his family and friends that he must be strong for are what
push him to new heights. Inside he is full of his own terror and pain,
but he is Gallant as he climbs this most difficult climb that will leave him Learning
to do again the tasks once so simple and easy.
Now he is inspiring! Don’t you just love people like this.
People who make you want to be a better person. People who live life, not
without fear, but live in spite of it. His example to live
through the pain inspires me to LIVE! Don’t you just love him! Don’t you
want to live better today through the difficulties you come against? Don’t you
just want to rise to the occasion now that you know of my friend!
He is inspirational for me, not because of his next great
adventure, but because of his peaks of joy that he conquers and climbs on a
daily basis. He helps me to keep my moans at bay and this helps me accomplish
my own day. I see my grandmother in his hands. I love bent and distorted
fingers, for those are where I found true love.
Fond memories that are kept alive through another’s willingness to live
joyfully. I want to live like my friend. I want to see life through
the eyes of a true sufferer who knows how to overcome. For his example helps me
live better today, so that I can see a tomorrow. To live gallantly and to
help others do the same, this is a
grand adventure indeed.
