Your book of life will rightly contain a number of interesting and diverse chapters. Some lives are filled with more dramatic episodes of change than others, but no matter how you look at it, change is an inevitable part of life.
My own life has moved through a number of distinct phases: my childhood, adolescence, young adulthood and the early years of adulthood. I’ve passed through successes and failures in every phase, yet each phase set the stage for the next, often in ways hidden from my view or recognition. The benefits of both success and failure may not be immediately known, in fact, they sometimes move through latency periods of days, weeks, months or even years, before you discover their true value.
In any case, the true measure of success is the degree to which you have lived up to your highest standard to “right” in thought, word and deed. Your outer accomplishments pale in comparison to the importance of this inner standard and it is my pleasure to share William George Jordan’s century old but untarnished perspective on this matter:
“Our highest hopes, are often destroyed to prepare us for better things. The failure of the caterpillar is the birth of the butterfly; the passing of the bud is the becoming of the rose; the death or destruction of the seed is the prelude to its resurrection as wheat. It is at night, in the darkest hours, those preceding dawn, that plants grow best, that they most increase in size. May this not be one of Nature’s gentle showings to man of the times when he grows best, of the darkness of failure that is evolving into the sunlight of success. Let us fear only the failure of not living the right as we see it, leaving the results to the guardianship of the Infinite.”
Take care that you do not obsess about the results of your living, for in so doing you will likely overlook and underestimate the primacy of “living the right.” When you think clearly and act rightly, the results take care of themselves. You needn’t worry about them in this sense, for the best result, given the situation, will come to light.
Gregory Hake 
Wonderful, once again – thanks!
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Any day! Or perhaps better, every day!
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That’s all you can do really, to “live in the right.”. Let the chips fall where they may, but our responsibility is fulfilled if we have acted responsibly. If we haven’t acted responsibly to the best of our abilities, well then there’s something we’ve got to seriously think about. Good point about obsession too, as that’s where the chronic worry comes from which is quite taxing to our well-being. Enjoying these essays!
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This should either put the heart to rest or be the admonition that allows the realization that the treasure is in “living the right”. Actually it seems to be the only place for true accomplishment.
Wonderful post, thanks.
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I’ve been enjoying this series of posts. Failure should not be seen as an end but an opportunity for giving way to something greater. With this perspective I have cringed a little over how many processes and even relationships I’ve probably thwarted because I wrote off certain stages as a final failure because things didn’t seem to look or be moving in the direction I though they should be. I love the admonition to fear not the results but the rightness throughout the process.
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All one has to do is pick up a biography of any one of our founding fathers, for example, to know the sense of what you are speaking of. The pages of history even over a short time show that results in the outer sense shift constantly. The sense of inner rightness is a great way to describe the compass we should be concerned with. Great topic today!
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I have never thought that a seed must die to make a plant, but I imagine from the seed’s perspective that is exactly what happens. From a higher viewpoint (ours), it would seem ridiculous for a seed to feel trepidation on its journey to become a mature plant, but it really is analogous to what we feel at the changing points of our journey through life. Just because we can’t see our progress or our life’s impact from an outside perspective, doesn’t mean that it isn’t being made. We must always realize that there is what is right to us, right now, and it really does make a difference to our future what we do in every moment.
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