"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall" ~ Confucius

I think I just failed a test today. A pretty important one too, worth about 10% of the final grade of one of my subjects. Just spent the last hour or so detoxing on Starcraft 2 with a friend, trying to get myself out that deep hole of depression...and so here I am, with this here quote, which I feel is quite fitting considering my circumstances today. Also, I figured maybe I'll try a different font today (Trebuchet), just to see how it turns out. 

To anyone who doesn't know who Confucius is, he was quite the big name in Chinese Philosophy who lived some thousand plus years or so ago and founding a system of philosophy known as Confucianism, which essentially stresses self-improvement. Of course, the real depth of Confucianism is not known to me, cause I'm not a Confucianist, so if anyone happens to be a Confucianist (I hope its the correct way to refer to one) do enlighten us at any point.

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall". This saying is also, one of my favourites. In fact, almost all of the quotes I probably put here are my favourites. But I digress. What does this quote mean?

To me, this quote is quite straightforward. Mainly, Confucius here touches on the subject of persistance. Its easy to see, that by 'falling' he means 'failure', and that by 'rising' he means not giving into failure. But this is something, I feel, which eludes the majority of us nowadays. How many times have we started something, only to not continue it because we felt it was not worth any more time spent on it?

This quote ties into the second ever quote I did, ""If you love life, don't waste time, for time is what life is made up of'" Mainly, 'Don't waste time'. Too many of us today start something, perhaps an exercise programme, perhaps learning how to speak another language, or perhaps learning how to invest in the stock market, anything, only to stop because we run into a failure. And too many of us, when we run into failure decide 'This isn't worth it anymore, I don't want to do it'. And at that point, all our effort and time go down the drain. 

Perhaps you think 'Well, I persisted, but it was just hopeless. I was getting nowhere'. And that I feel, is truly what this quote is referring to. That when we run into that wall of failure, when every action we take is just wrong, and when everything we do just doesn't seem to work out, it is so easy to give up and take the pain. But the truth is, there is nothing good that comes out of giving up. But when we accomplish something, so much good comes out of it, even if it was a little thing. And when we consider that we mostly give up when we're so close to our goals, its such a shame that we gave up all that incoming goodness just so that we didn't have to deal with the failure anymore. 

A lot of people think that in order to be 'good' at something, you have to be flawless. And so a tiny failure becomes a monument to their inadequacy, showing how worthless they are. But thats not how to become good. The greatest successes encountered failure many times, but instead of seeing them as failures, they are seen as lessons. Lessons in what not to do, lessons in how to improve. They embrace failure, seeing it as a way to improve. And they don't give up. That is persistance personified. And that is their 'greatest glory'.

I realise I'm not really interpreting these quotes. I'm instead, sharing my views on them...not actively decoding them. But hey, anything helps I suppose. And to anyone who reads this in the future...it'd be nice to hear about your views, and what you think about these quotes. 

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