THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS FAILURE!

REGARDING HENRY

By Henrylito D. Tacio



THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS FAILURE!



THE chorus of a popular song goes this way: "Now I understand / What you tried to say to me; / How you suffered for your sanity, / How you tried to set them free; / They would not listen / They didn't not know how, / Perhaps they'll listen now."



The song was written by Don McLean as a tribute to Vincent Willem van Gogh, one of the Netherland's greatest painters. He produced more than 2,000 works, including around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches, during the last ten years of his life. Most of his best-known works were produced in the final two years of his life.



In his book, 'Heroes: People Who Made a Difference in Our World,' Dr. Harold J. Sala noted: "Today, one of his paintings sells for tens of millions of dollars, yet in his lifetime he sold only one painting, for the equivalent of about a hundred dollars. For most of his life, he had to depend on the charity of his brother (Theo) for survival. If ever a man's great talents were unrecognized in his day, Van Gogh was that person."



As a kid, he had trouble relating with other people. His comment on his early years was: "My youth was gloomy and cold and sterile…" He wanted to become a preacher like his father so much so that he entered a theological seminary in Brussels. But for reasons not known until now, he was kicked out from the seminary reportedly for being "overly zealous," according to one biographer.



Friendless and outcast even to his own family, he decided to become a painter. He studied the impressionists but he didn't strive to be one of them. He wanted to be himself, and he painted his own way. Don McLean croons: "Starry, starry night, / Paint your palette blue and gray, / Look out on a summer's day / With eyes that know the darkness in my soul. / Catch the breeze and the winter chills / In colors on the snowy linen land."



Most of Van Gogh's best-known works were produced in the final two years of his life, during which time he cut off part of his left ear following a breakdown in his friendship with Paul Gauguin. After this he suffered recurrent bouts of mental illness.



At the age of 37, he walked into the fields and shot himself in the chest with a revolver. Without realizing that he was fatally wounded he returned to the inn where he was staying and there died in his bed two days later. His brother Theo hastened to be at his side and reported his brother's last words were: "La tristesse durera toujours" (French for "the sadness will last forever").



"All his life, he considered himself to be a failure," wrote Dr. Sala in his book. "Was he really a failure? Your answer depends on how you look at life. Today, a massive museum in Amsterdam houses his nearly priceless works of art. He is recognized the world over as a great artist."



John B. Johnson reminds, "People do not inadvertently stumble into failure. They think their way into it." And William A. Ward said it succinctly: "Man swims in the sea of self-satisfaction, nibbles at the bait of procrastination, swallows the hook of mediocrity, and ends up in the net of failure."



Failure is always a part of being successful. As Emmett LeCompte puts it: "He who has never failed has never tried." In other words, "Failures can be divided into those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought," to quote the words of W.A. Nance.



Charles Kettering admonishes, "You fail because your ideas aren't right. You should be afraid to fail, but you should learn to fail intelligently. But that I mean, when you fail, find out why you failed, and each time you fail it will bring you up nearer to the goal."



This reminds us the story of Thomas Alva Edison. This American inventor had only three months of formal schooling. And yet, history records show that he knew more failures than successes. For 13 months, Edison kept on searching for a filament that would stand the stress of electric current. As he pondered whether he would be able to discover the elusive thing, he got a note from people backing his experiment that they would no longer be giving additional funds for what he was then doing.



News like that may bring a person to quit, but not Edison. In fact, it did not deter him from continuing his work. He refused to admit defeat and worked without sleep for two more days and nights. Eventually, he managed to insert one of the crude carbonized threads into a vacuum-sealed bulb. "When we turned on the current," he recalled, "the sight we had so long desired finally met our eyes!"



Before that, however, Edison had to endure a string of failures. "What a waste! We have tried no less than 700 experiments and nothing has worked. We are not a bit better off than when we started," a couple of men who were working alongside him said. He just shrugged this comment, telling them, "Oh yes, we are! We now know 700 things that won't work. We're closer than we've ever been before."



Howard W. Newton points out, "When a man blames others for his failures, it's a good idea to credit others with his successes." In fact, some people, however, can dismiss failures humorously. Comedian actor W.C. Fields once said: "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no use being a damn fool about it."



If you're facing a string of failures, don't be discouraged. Don't plan to quit. An unknown poet advises: "When things go wrong as they sometimes will, when the road you're trudging seems all uphill, when the funds are low and the debts are high, and you want to smile, but you have to sigh;



"When care is pressing you down a bit, rest if you must, but don't you quit. Life is queer with its twists and turns, as every one of us sometimes learns, and many a failure turns about when he might have won had he stuck it out.



"Don't give up though the pace seems slow – you may succeed with another blow. Success is failure turned inside out – the silver tint of the clouds of doubt, and you never can tell just how close you are, it may be near when it seems so far."



The final line said it all: "So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit – it's when things seem worst that you must not quit."