January is the time for New Year's resolutions, the time to start over, the time to start something new. But so often, as we all know, these New Year's resolutions hardly work out. We get tired, we get lazy, we fail to see them through. Well, this year, my New Year's resolution is one that I know that I can achieve, and more importantly, one that I know you can achieve. This year, I will fail. I will fail every single chance that I can.
As a senior in high school, it’s fun to look back and reflect on the naivete, petty drama, philosophies, and actions which filled my past. We were so silly, we were so stupid, we were so young. Yet I know that people of all ages have this same thought. We can always look back, at the person we once we and see how far we have come. We learn from our past, we learn from our successes, but most importantly, we learn from our failures.
2016 was one of the most amazing years of my life. I applied to college, I was accepted for a board position at one of the most substantial nonprofits in the world, I was granted the opportunity to spend a week in Nicaragua on a mission trip, I started dating, I picked up a new sport, I made tons of new friends, and the list goes on and on… But in 2016, I also failed in ways that I had never failed before.
I’m a good, high-achieving kid. I’m in all the top classes, I’m in several honors societies, I’m a long term varsity athlete, I avidly take part in theater, and I’m dedicated to my faith. Being the high-achieving person that I am, I had typically always gotten what I wanted when I put in the work for it. But this trend quickly turned in 2016.
Freshman year I was placed in the second highest math offered at my school, and I did not get moved up to honors until my junior year. Honors math, however, was a total culture shock. The pace was much faster than I expected and the concepts were so much more thorough. Throughout the entirety of first semester I was playing catch up to my peers. After failing the final (I got a 60 percent), I finished that first semester with the lowest final grade that I had ever received in my entire life, and I was heartbroken. 2016 was not starting off on a good note.
More failure quickly followed. In January of 2016, I ran for my church group's chair position. I had been dreaming of winning this title since I was in seventh grade. On one January afternoon, however, my dream was ripped away from me as one of my dearest friends won the position. Heartbroken, I wallowed into a depression. I was so deeply immersed in the monthly meetings, the Saturday service projects, and the people who went to school 30 to 45 minutes away from me that when my only source of air, the hope that I would win chair, was torn away from me, I began to drown in the dark, lifeless ocean that was my life (Dark right? But that’s honestly how I felt). At this point in my life, I had only a handful of healthy friendships at school, but I was able to survive because I had adorned my church group as my safe zone, a place where I could go and be happy when other parts of my life were not working out. This safe zone, however, was now a place where I found nothing but embarrassment, self-consciousness, and sorrow. I was lost.
I continued to fail throughout 2016. I burned several bridges with some good, quality friends. I did not put enough time or commitment into relationships and I watched them slowly fade away. I got in a car wreck. I did not reach several of the goals I had set for myself. For the first time in forever, I was experiencing huge amounts of failure.
The odd thing is, however, that I consider 2016 to be one of the best years of my life. I can look back at all the times that I failed, all the crazy mishaps that happened, and I can point to the exact way that those failures strengthened or introduced positive qualities in my life. I feel stronger. I run faster. I speak bolder. I am better.
A cliche states that we are not defined by our failures but rather how we respond to our failure, and here is my response. I challenge you failure! I challenge you to throw everything you have my way.
Because I performed so poorly in my math class, I learned what it truly meant to study. I learned what dedication is, and I was able to exponentially improve my scores the next semester. Because of my failure to win that coveted chair position, I was able to broaden my horizons and get active in my school’s ministry program, in secular service work, and really build an amazing friend base at my school.
I may have failed more than I ever had before in 2016, but I plan to break that record in 2017.
