The lessons in losing
Bestselling author JK Rowling was rejected by no fewer than 10 publishers, while the greatestever basketballer, Michael Jordan, didn’t make his high-school team and Beethoven was dismissed by his violin teacher as having no musical talent.
With success in no way assured, why did these people pursue their dreams with gritty determination and resolve? The answer is simple: they had to. They had no choice but to follow their life purpose no matter the heartache or rejection. Rowling had to invent Harry Potter, Beethoven had to express the music pulsing through his veins, Jordan needed to bounce that ball. The endeavour was everything. If you only do something to achieve a particular outcome, you actually deprive yourself of the passionate pursuit.
Not all dreams of success come true and many of us have dreams that aren’t realised, but that doesn’t in any way diminish the validity of the dream. Sometimes, in failure, we are so diminished by the loss that we often overlook the self-knowledge acquired along the way. We forget that it’s the pursuit that defines us, not the outcome.
Winners and losers
We live in a society that pivots on binary propositions and ideals. Left or right, for or against and, of course, winners and losers. It can only be one or the other — and this
