“Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

People fail. People fail all the time, but there are two types of people: the people who rise again, better and stronger, and then those who stay down. Failing, in a sense, can be seen as falling— especially in the cliche phrase “fall seven times, get up eight.”

At the end, when you’ve reached your end goal and have gotten to where you aimed to be, the journey there is arbitrary. It’s important because of the lessons learned on the way there, but once you’ve reached the top, no one will care how many times you’ve fallen or failed. In fact, failures can be seen as a type of success— in getting back up again, you have succeeded. As long as you ultimately end up in the position you wanted to be in, you have succeeded.

The strength required, physically and mentally, to get up again after a fall is often more than it takes to remain standing or to remain successful. There is a consistency in keeping in constant motion. It’s physics: objects that are in motion tend to stay in motion, and objects that are at rest tend to stay at rest. If one falls, it breaks the constant motion of moving forward. It takes more energy and more motivation to get up and back into motion, just as it takes much more effort to rise again after falling. 

Amy Shih