What Is The Name Of Spot Between
Success And Failure?
I was preparing strawberries for my milkshake when I heard someone knocking at the door. I opened the door and saw a guy with a dim face. It was William. I was surprised because normally, he meets people with a smiley face. But on that day, he was serious and seemed quite unhappy.
He went to the bathroom to freshen up and I proceeded to make milkshakes for both of us. I remembered from the day before his conversation with Alex, in which they were planning to go to the city early in the morning to apply for certain documents.
I understood the reason for his bad mood and told myself that I have a case to solve.
William is a refugee, who travelled almost 6000 miles by road to reach Italy and it included several weeks of walking through forests and mountains, to get settled in Europe.
The milkshake was ready and William finally emerged from the bathroom. I filled two glasses, one for him and one for myself. We sat around a dinner table and began to drink the milkshake.
“How did it go with your documents?” I asked.
“It was a very long queue. I was standing the whole day and when it was my turn, they closed the office. I never wanted to come to Italy. I had planned to go to Germany. It was one particular guy who sent me here,” William replied disappointedly and a bit furiously.
I asked, “You must have thought for a few days or at least a dozen times before coming to Italy. Didn’t you?”
He replied, “Yes, and I plan to get the documents from here and go to Germany for work.”
“Does it mean you are going according to plan?” I enquired.
Until then, he had already finished half of his milkshake. His tune was changed and he just replied with a yes.
I continued, “ look! If you are going to Rome and in the middle of your journey, your train stops for a while for some reason, does it mean the journey you travelled is useless? You want to go to Rome, your direction is right and your choice of the train is right and now it’s just a matter of time before you reach your destination. Right?”
William is a smart guy, he immediately understood my assumptions. He laughed and said, “Man, you are right!”
Later, I was thinking to myself – Why do we either declare ourselves a successor or a failure? Is there anything in the middle between success and failure?
And then I decided to share this story with you guys with a message that the feeling or emotion which actually lies between success and failure is patience. Here we can call it “waiting time.”
Waiting Time
This waiting time is actually going to decide your fate.
If you are a farmer and worked the whole season on your crops, if you are an entrepreneur and spent a few months on your dream project, if you are a PhD scholar and did one experiment for few years, if you are a new graduate and already spent 3 to 5 years studying your favorite subject, if you are a video maker, wrote a story, voice over your script, made this amazing video, and share it with the public for the first time ever, now it’s time to wait.
William marked with a cross his few months’ struggles just by facing an unsuccessful attempt when he was already in Italy. He also blamed the guy who suggested Italy to him, although he later admitted that it was his own decision. An unsuccessful attempt made him feel like everything was going wrong in his life and that his life is nothing but a failure.
That’s not true.
Life doesn’t exist only between two extremes of success and failure. There is one important spot to consider and the name of that is patience.
When you face an unsuccessful attempt, it’s not over yet. It’s your waiting time.
And during this waiting time you are resting, you are re-charging, you are enjoying with other things, you are learning, you are planning, and you are perhaps considering new ways of doing things.
You can even take a look back at your journey and count your miles. You will realize that you have travelled a lot more than you had thought. There are just a few more steps to go.
Patience is not a negative phrase. It’s not a failure. It’s part of the journey and it’s part of hard work. All successful people have been through this part of their work. It’s surely the hardest part but the most delicious thing which we call “success” lies beyond this obstacle. And quite interestingly, the longer this waiting time the more delicious the success will be.
The next day I saw William smiling and singing while cooking with Alex. I told myself, “I guess I solved the case.” He is probably considering his waiting time to enjoy in Italy after travelling 6000 miles.
