When I was little and would lose a wrestling match or lose a nail-biter tennis match my mom always used to tell me the same story. She wasn’t very good at empathizing so she always just said the same thing. It went a little something like this: “John was ashamed when he lost the race the loss was a blow to his pride. He said ‘Mom if I couldn’t win I wish I never had tried.’ She said ‘Johnny boy you did your best now hold your head up high for there’s no dishonor in failing there’s dishonor in failing to try.'” It was cheesy but it always put things into perspective.
My siblings and I were always taught that if you are afraid to ask a question there’s never an excuse not to face that fear. If you ask the answer might be “no” but if you don’t ask the answer is automatically “no.”
In a culture where we’re tested often whether it be for AP exams SATs ACTs midterms finals or even a driver’s test failure is often viewed as a non-option. We’re not allowed to fail: Failure could mean an unrecoverable blow to our GPAs being cut off from our parents’ deep pockets or worse not getting into graduate school. However is this the best way to view failure? Surely the United States didn’t become the country it is today because we’ve always been risk averse.
Thomas Edison is famously quoted as saying that he didn’t fail at inventing the light bulb 1000 times; rather he learned 1000 wrong ways to make a light bulb.
When we think of Richard Branson what to we think of? We think of Virgin Records Virgin Airlines or even Virgin Galactic which will soon be launching its first civilian passengers into space from a $200 million spaceport in New Mexico. We most definitely don’t think of Virgin Cola a failed soda brand launched in the mid-1990s to take on giants Coca-Cola and Pepsi. When we think about the Virgin brand why don’t we think of Virgin Cola? Because we are not defined by our failures; rather we are defined by our success and our ability to get back on our feet after we stumble.
In Southern Thailand there’s an island called Koh Panyee. Attached to this island is a village that has no land. It is simply a collection of floating houses attached to a tiny inhospitable rock.
The kids in the village loved to watch soccer on TV but having no land they had no place to play. So they came up with an idea. An innovative seemingly impossible idea for which the older villagers teased them. They decided to find some scrap wood and some old fishing rafts and build their own pitch. Every day after school the kids would get together and do more. Day after day they worked. And in the end they had a small wooden pitch that was uneven and had of nails sticking out of it. After they had build the floating pitch they began playing every day. The ball would often go in the water and the pitch would get very wet. They developed great footwork playing on a small uneven wet slippery surface.
Eventually they had the opportunity to go to the mainland and test their skills against other teams that had been practicing on grass and dirt their entire lives. The team made it to the semifinals of the small tournament lost and ended up in third place. While the team was generally satisfied with the result they didn’t settle for third. They returned to the village and continued to work.
That was 1986. Today soccer is the tiny village’s number one pastime. The team that the kids founded back then is now one of the top youth soccer clubs in Southern Thailand. They were the youth champions of Southern Thailand in 20042005200620072008 2009 and 2010.
What if those first kids had been afraid to pursue their dream? What could we all accomplish if we weren’t afraid to fail? Just a thought.
To view the video of the team check out “TMB Panyee FC short film” on Youtube.