I am home from my summer traveling, only to come home to either a job for the next few months or a move in October.  I probably have more ideas on experiential education in my head than I have actively made peace with.  However, I’d like to start with something I saw on the announcement board at a church yesterday as I was out taking care of some errands.

The board showed the sermon topic for this upcoming Sunday as: My Friend Failure.

Aside from the My Friend Flicka reference, I found myself wondering what the intent of that title truly is.  If said sincerely, it’s a great topic.  If said with a more sarcastic tone, it’s an indicator of how so many of us have been conditioned to feel.  I have decided to assume that the intent is the first.

Regardless of what many of us have been told growing up, failure is one of the best teachers.  It lets you make your own decisions about how to interact with your own experiences.  This in turn allows you to create your own relationship with your experiences by allowing you to change one thing to see if you succeed.  It never gives up on you because it’s right there to encourage you to analyze what happened and then try again.

To those who live with the fear of failure, I encourage you to embrace failure.  It doesn’t make you a bad person to make a mistake, and to avoid those things where you make a mistake is to rob yourself of learning opportunities.  Robbing yourself of learning opportunities further robs you of opportunities for personal growth.

Be brave.  Go out and improve yourself by failing at something.