I believe that human beings as a species have the best intentions. I choose to think that when given the chance we will try to do the right thing whenever possible. That is not to say we are infallible but rather that we will choose right over wrong. That is obviously not always the case. You can look around at society and given the court system and the amount of people incarcerated in jails and prisons not everyone follows the pattern I suggested.
Some would say I am naïve or perhaps too optimistic in that belief. Granted, from news reports and in just observations of others around us there are days that even I question whether my assessment is accurate. In those times I double down in hoping that the human race will rise above their differences or negativity and become a more noble species that attempts to become better than we were.
Given this philosophy, I struggle with myself when I don’t live up to the standards or goals that I set for myself. In my younger days I would be very hard on myself when things didn’t work out or if I missed a goal. Over the years though I have begun to think of things as a learning experience whether that is for my learning or for those I am in contact with.
That isn’t to say that I still don’t become self-critical when I do not live up to expectations but rather that I will take those moments and try to understand why they happened and adjust course accordingly. I could fill this blog with an endless list of times where I failed but that really isn’t the point. There is a famous quote that comes from a man many may not expect to have said this.
It’s not how many times you get knocked down that count, it’s how many times you get back up.
– George A. Custer
Many of us can only remember the one time where Custer was knocked down and that was at Little Big Horn but he had a very illustrious career before that. He was one of the youngest generals in the American Civil War getting his first star at the age of 23. He played a key role in the battle of Gettysburg and was a flamboyant hero to many Americans. This may have led to his overconfidence against Crazy Horse and the Indian warriors.
I am not about to get into a discussion around the treatment of Native Americans nor a debate on whether Custer should have even been leading those troops at that moment. That will be left to historians and those who have visited the site of the battle (which I highly recommend to everyone as it is a humbling place).
The point of this was to expound that failure should not dictate who we are. We should never look at ourselves and assess our value or success based upon whether we did or did not reach our goals on the first attempt. Instead we should measure whether we had the intestinal fortitude to set the goals and when missing the mark did we make the necessary adjustments to continue moving forward.
Such is where I find myself with the 100 Days of Swift challenge. I began full of hope and enthusiasm when it started on February 1st expecting things to go smoothly each day. The commitment of an hour a day to learn a new skill seemed a trivial request. After all, we spend more time than that pondering what to eat each day (well some of us do).
The first 13 days went well, and my confidence grew; perhaps too much as I took the time commitment and effort for granted. Then life began to intrude. A web site went down that I had been running and I expected a resolution to that to happen quickly and return to working on Swift.
But things continued to spiral and after missing a day due to troubleshooting I thought I could make it up doing two days as one, but the web site was in worse shape than I thought. Add to that that I developed a cold and my energy levels faded as did my enthusiasm. Soon I was three days behind and then four. As the outage and my health struggles extended, I found myself a week behind.
For me, I looked at that as now I had missed a third of the time the challenge had been going. Was it even worth continuing? How easy it would have been to chalk this up to just bad timing of starting this challenge and perhaps I would try again at another time when things would not be so hectic.
As I contemplated that I wondered, when will the planets ever align where I have the time to devote to something new? When will I ever have 100 days where nothing could distract me? If I don’t figure out a way to do this now when will I? So instead of giving up, I took Custer’s advice and decided that despite losing a week I would dust myself off and move forward. I may not finish the challenge at the same date as others but I will finish nonetheless and I will do so knowing that despite adversity I persevered and that is an achievement that is worth savoring.
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