Failure Is Our Friend
No one wants to fail. We all want to succeed in everything we try and to avoid failure. Nonetheless, failing and learning from  our bitter experiences is necessary for success. In fact, the most successful people are often people who have experienced many  more failures than others.
 
One of the most famous examples of someone who learned from failure was Thomas Edison. He was one of the world's greatest inventors, and he acquired over 1,000 patents. Like a wizard, he seemed to take ideas from thin air. However, he also faced tremendous difficulties. Edison is said to have failed 9,999 times before creating a perfect light bulb. Unlike the average person, Edison saw these mistakes not as failures but as an inevitable part of the invention process. In response to a question about his errors, he once said, "I have not failed 9,999 times. I've successfully found 9,999 ways that will not work." Of course, he was right. He was able to achieve success after failing repeatedly.
 
These failures can not only motivate us to find a successful way to accomplish our goal but also help us to grow in wisdom and in spirit. Toni Morrison began writing when she was in college, but she did not produce anything good enough to publish for many years. Her troubled marriage, divorce, and life as a single mother made it even harder for her to write. At 39, she published her first novel, The Bluest Eye, which received mixed reviews and did not sell well. However, all her hardships added depth to her novels and encouraged her to improve her writing skills. Later in her life, Morrison wrote masterpieces such as Song of Solomon, Beloved, and Jazz. In 1993, she became the first African-American woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Sometimes failure can lead us to success by showing us that we are not good at something. The fashion designer Vera Wang, for example, found a path to success, thanks to her failure. At the age of seven, she began devoting herself to figure skating, hoping to compete in the Olympics. When she was 19, however, she failed to make the U.S. Olympic team and quit figure skating. She experienced a brutal letdown. While staying in Paris, she happened to discover her passion for and talent in fashion design, which led her to move to fashion as a career. After returning to America, she started working as a salesperson in a clothing store. Developing her career from editor of a fashion magazine to design director for a global brand for about 20 years, she eventually ended up designing clothes on her own. Today, Vera Wang is a world-famous designer whose elegant dresses are sought after by celebrities the world over.

Still, wouldn't it be even better if we could be successful without ever failing? We may think so, but in the end, performing without failure doesn't necessarily produce lasting success. All success with no failure often leads a person to arrogance and carelessness. As a result, the always successful person or organization could suddenly encounter a disaster. Between the 1960s and the 1980s, NASA, the U.S. agency in charge of researching and exploring space, completed one successful mission after another with no significant failure. In 1968, it launched Apollo 8, the first manned spacecraft to fly around the moon. In 1969, Apollo 11 landed on the moon, and the NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person in history to walk on the moon.

During the following years, NASA successfully sent five other rockets to the moon. Even when the oxygen tank in Apollo 13 exploded on its way to the moon in 1970, its entire crew was rescued, and they were able to return home safely. This continued series of successes made the decision-makers at NASA too self-assured and unable to imagine failure. In 1986, NASA planned to send its second space shuttle, Challenger, into orbit. Right before the launch, engineers expressed concerns about mechanical malfunctions and advised that the launching be postponed. However, NASA managers did not take their warnings seriously and launched Challenger as planned. Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after it was launched, resulting in the deaths of its seven crew members.

Edison, Morrison, and Wang all suffered big failures, but they never gave up. They learned from their mistakes and went on to experience even greater triumphs. Like many successful people, we should view failure not as the opposite of success, but as an indispensable step on the path to reach success. After all, the only way to avoid failures is to do nothing. J.K. Rowling said that suffering many failures in her life eventually enabled her to write the Harry Potter series. She remarked, "Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way." By risking and confronting failures and learning from them, we can become wiser and stronger.