If at first you don’t succeed try and try again. And again and again, not because you are lacking but because living and figuring things out is a process. It is a life long process. Success and happiness are states from which and into which we slip and slide out of and the frequency of tries is directly related to the kind of life we choose to have.
I have heard that saying, now a cliche hundreds of thousands of times, but when I encountered it this morning it felt and sounded different. It didn’t change. I have changed. Changed in a good way because I realize that all we really have is our attempts. That is the only thing we own and control. Everything else is up to everyone else.
Interestingly enough, the idea of try and try again is not a question, it is a statement of fact. In this way it is different from people musing that they should really give this or that a try. Those tries are questions and those kind of questions are very misleading and unproductive. Those kind of tries are nothing more than some wishful thinking that will pass and produce little effort.
Try and try again must always be a statement. It only works as a concrete and resolute response to something we want to be. It is a call to never give up to to make long range plans not short ones. It is not good enough to get excited and live day to day. Eventually the tide will shift and we our emotions and habits will get in the way. We will naturally return to our most consistent state of being. But if we don’t want to return to being and doing what we always do, than we have to do things we have never done before. We have to try and try again.
Pick something you really, really want. Something you have dreamt about for years. Focus on it and make a long range plan. It should be at least a five year plan, or maybe seven. It has to be something far enough away, so that you have an opportunity to fail and try and try again.
There is not try again in the short term. It’s the short term. Everything is new and everything is going well. It is the long term that requires us to keep going, to keep standing up, to keep fighting.
If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again.
Be absolutely resolute to see and behold what you dream of beholding. Accept no compromise when it comes to your dreams, but accept defeat and things not going your way. Things are not going to go your way, not the way we think they are going to go. Life has a way of happening and things have a way of working out, without our consent and without being able to perceive it. For this reason you can never accept defeat. Not in the things that matter and are important. In terms of who you are and how you deserve to be treated by other people. In terms of who you want to be, and the energy and training it will take to get there.
If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again.
And when you get there time and time again, help someone else, because our dreams are all interwoven. We human beings are all intimately connected. We hold pieces to make other people’s dreams come true and so if you are waiting for that something you wish to behold, wait patiently a little while long, and in the meantime lend someone else a helping hand.
Cover photo generously provided by photographer Simeon Jacobson.
