Failure is commonly feared which is astonishing considering that failure is inevitable; a rather daunting note in which even the most oblivious can’t deny. I am no one to judge, in fact I have fallen a countless amount of times to each occurrence of failure. I have wept and regretted but there is a lesson to be learn. Perhaps, one that I’ve missed one too many times and granted one that I didn’t really want to know to begin with. That’s the thing about humans, we want to know answers...we’ll cry and we’ll plead but when they are given to us, we hesitate to read...

Why is that? Is it perhaps that we fear losing the possibility to blame our problems on the dreading evils of failure? One forbid us of being the source of our own problems.

Here’s the thing, I don’t particularly think failure is something to fear. By all means, don’t take this the wrong way. Failure is brutal. It’s belittles us and it yanks us from our pedestal that we build. Which, in theory, is never quite as high as it seems considering that we built it out of a fantasy and good job stickers mother used to give you every time you remember to bathe. Failure is brutal. If you are one to have your heads in the clouds, leave it to failure to bring you back to earth.

It a hard job -- grounding everyone and bringing everyone to the reality of it all. I like to think of failure as the stern parent. There comes a time in our life when we ask “why?” We all know that "why." The "why are you against me" why. The “why are you ruining my life" why. Starting to ring any bells? Don’t you just want to go run into your room, slam the door and blast loud angry girl band rock music?

But, no matter how much you screamed that “why,” I’m willing to bet that you were thankful your “stern parent” put you in that position. Just imagine where you would be if your stern parent let you get that oh so hip tattoo of “I heart Justin Bieber” on your shoulder. Or maybe if they let you go to that party that everyone but yourself were going to. Well guess what; everyone but you got put into jail for underaged drinking and disturbing the peace. Let’s be honest, the music is never quite that good to begin with at those gatherings...

My point is that failure is not the end of the world. Although it may seem that your world is crashing and tumbling into the abyss of nothing, take note of your surroundings. Everything happens for a reason. There is always good even in what seems to be not so beneficial. You see, failure isn’t a bad guy and it certainly isn’t something that you should fear. Failure prepares you for the future. It teaches you a lesson and by doing so, it puts you on the right track. Even if failure brings you down, you’ll always be heading up.

I’ll take a moment to explain this in further details. As humans, we like to set goals. Like goals, they tend to be out of reach (for the time being) and therefore, placed above of heads. We, as humans, tend to think that we are climbing “up” to our particular goals. The word “up” is commonly used as a direction; a direction for success. Although many people seem to fancy this version of the word, I like to think of it a bit different. The word “up” to me, at least in this content, means heading in the right direction. “Up” doesn’t necessarily need to be up...it could be down, right, left, and even zig-zagged for all we know. As long as we are heading in the direction of our goal, we will always be heading up.

That being said, if failure drags you down, it is only putting you in reach of your goals. People never really think about it this way but just remember it is always better to be two floors below your goal than ten floors above your goal. You might needed to be on the tenth floor to gain a certain asset of knowledge, but you are dragged down a couple floors to gain an asset you missed. Remember, one never explores the depth of a building in order. Just because you are heading down doesn’t mean you aren’t heading in the right direction. You can learn from each and every floor you pass, even the one below you.

Note to self: learn to find the Yang of failure.