“Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.” Emily Dickinson
Is the bar over which you
plan to leap high enough that there is a chance you might fail?
Is the target toward which
you aim specific enough, focused enough, that it takes some real skill and
hours upon hours of devoted practice to achieve steady success in hitting it?
Is the finish line toward
which you run distant enough that you will need a lifetime of devotion to finally
cross the finish line and break through into your victory lap?
As Ms. Dickinson’s poetry
reminds us, when we lose the battles we fight, the defeat makes ‘sweet’ to our
minds and spirits the sound of success.
But these defeats might also be mere steps on the way to an elusive,
gloriously far goal. If your goal is too small, or too ambiguous, or too close,
you will know something like success, but not the sweetness of anticipated
achievement which defeat teaches as we hear “The
distant strains of triumph/Burst agonized and clear.”
May God grant you the
blessings of health strong enough to leap over your highest barrier; with a
focused determination to pierce the bullseye which gives you lasting joy; and
with a life long enough to reach your finish line. But may God also grant you
the spiritual strength, the emotional stamina, to survive enough defeats to
know the value of real success. And may
you come to know, sooner rather than later, what it means to live a ‘successful’
life.
May you count success as
sweet because you are always just one more step from the end you are destined
to achieve. Until, at the last, you, like the Victor, rise for the last time.
(Success is Counted Sweetest by Emily Dickinson in The Top 500 Poems, W. Harmon, ed.
Columbia University Press, New York)
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