Banana Skins

Banana Skins
I seem to write a lot about difficulties and trials.  I was questioning that but realized it is sort of restoring the balance.  So much is written that makes people look like Teflon people.  Success is promoted and almost seen as a given.
I look at things like that and think “life is not like that for me.”  For me life is a mixture.  Success and failures.  Yet in magazines it is not the failures that stand out but the success.  To me success is always to be desired, but that is not all there is, if my life is typical.
We all stumble.  It is a fact of life.  It can be really embarrassing.  Tripping is never a good look.  Tripping in a way that is not just physical is never a good look and embarrassing.  But as coaches of teams so often say there is more learnt in failure than success.  Success is always better, but failure is good if lessons are learned.
A story I heard about an early martyr inspires me no end.  The guy was to be burned at the stake.  He recanted while walking there.  Then later on he went through with it.    People that go through with it straight away I cannot relate to.  I can relate to someone who had second thoughts, and then thought the better of it.
I was in a hurry to catch a bus one time.  The bus driver was waiting at the door for people to arrive.  I arrived and looked down and there was a banana peel.  I looked at the bus driver and he looked at me and we both laughed.  It was a classic man slips on banana skin set up.
I have slipped on banana skins.  But what matters is not how often I slip on banana skins but how often I get up again, brush myself off, and move on.  Slipping on the same banana skin in the same place all the time is just dumb.  It only shows I have learned nothing.  But if I avoid that banana skin and slip on one further down the road, I can learn from that as long I get up.
It may be that just getting up again is what I need to learn.  That is probably the most important lesson of all.  Progress can only be made by getting up and moving on.  Mao quoted an ancient Chinese philosopher when he said, “A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with a Single Step.”  Gott start somewhere.
There no doubt will be other banana skins further on, and the wise will avoid them, but I have slipped on a few in my time.
I got up, brushed myself off and moved on.