One of my
favourite sayings has been “when you lose, don't lose the lesson”
by Dalai Lama.
We all
believe that everything happens for a reason but still contest when
some things happen and sometimes ask the question “why always me?”
- like footballer Mario Balotelli.
But do we
really understand that some things happen randomly? Why would a man
wake up in the morning with a headache and say he is being
witch-hunted by witches and wizards in his village but never says the
same culprits made him feel good when he wakes up well rested.
If we had
an excuse for every misfortune that befalls us, why don't we have a
solution to avoid its recurrence in future? If we have the reasoning
capacity to know where certain misfortunes come from, why don't we
have an equally reasoning capacity to get us out of the misfortunes
and possibly avoid getting into same?
If I have
to put my failure to pass a particular course on the difficulty of an
exam, i'll keep failing and keep blaming the difficulty for my
failure. Maybe I may someday upgrade and say the lecturer dislikes me
that's why he sets difficult questions targeted at me alone. But what
stops me from thinking I may be doing something wrong to warrant my
failure? Why can I not “re-strategize” and change my approach? It
probably has to do with my belief that I cannot be wrong and so the
other party has to change his approach.
A saying
credited to Albert Einstein goes “insanity: doing the same thing
over and over again and expecting different results”, this is like
putting salt into coffee over and over again and expecting it to
taste like it contains sugar. It just wont happen. This saying goes
hand in hand with the earlier Dalai Lama quote “when you lose,
don't lose the lesson”.
These
quotes can be brought together thus, if plan A does not work, move to
plan B and do not waste time on plan A or claim you are trying to
perfect plan A (who you dey deceive?). BUT, take lessons
learnt from the failure of plan A that you can use to perfect your
plan B, and also guide against making the same mistake as plan A.
No human
is omniscient (well neither are animals nor robots), so there is no
obligation to get it right the first, second, third or one millionth
time, as long as lessons are learnt, going forward previous errors
are not repeated as to show insanity and you keep progressing. After-all, the light bulb was not invented by repeating mistakes made from the first attempt.
