Success and Failure and Misconceptions Therein

One thought that strikes me as I sit down to another few hours of trying to cobble together a meaningful post is that it must be both extremely tiresome to a reader to try and navigate my somewhat clichéd musings interjected with superfluous and unnecessary twists of the language in which the former are contained. See? Boring and needlessly tricky to read. Nevertheless, the purpose of the blog was never to entertain, but to find some form of, for wont of a better word, enlightment as to my own thoughts on certain matters.

Rather conveniently, this gives a nice setting for the topic at hand, which I will explain more coherantly momentarily. When one thinks of either success or failure, several things spring to mind near enough subconciously. Both imply some sort of attempt at some goal has taken place, and that an amount of effort has gone into it. The distinction, of course, is that one fulfilled the goal initially set out upon, and other does not. However, that is the point at which definition draws its boundaries, and some further exploration is necessary. An example, perhaps, will reveal some finer details which may shed more light than the textbook explanation.

Here, is where the aforementioned setting of my blog becomes more apparent as a convenience, in the form of an example. At the blogs creation, it was my intention (for purposes of clarity it may be useful if I limit synonym usage here, to help identify with concepts, so let's go with "Goal") to try and determine exactly what was going in within my own head, find answers to certain niggling questions and aid in the setting of targets and tasks to be completed. Now, if we were to take this as the "Goal" to the "Endeavour" of the blog creation certain other factors expressed earlier become clear in example. The time investiture and work involved in the creation and posting of the blog represent the Effort used by me in the execution of the Endeavour in an attempt to reach the Goal. Now, however long-winded this may seem, I am in fact reaching a point, as if we were to superimpose the concepts of success and failure in their aforementioned definitions, it would seem that if the Goal were to be achieved, the Endeavour would be a success, and if not then it would be a failure. This is more or less irrefutable, if the judgement went down to the technicality, but I believe there is more to it, which can be moved onto rather swiftly.

Now, such a simple example with no testing and observation is all well and good for a rather cynical person to force a point onto those who oppose them, but not for those seeking a rather more complete understanding on a topic via an open mind. In that spirit, let us explore, instead of a specifc example, the general possibilities involved in the concept, in their infinite number. The one which sprung to mind and more or less spurred this entire paragraph so far into being is that the definition of success is rather shaky and blurred. If your Endeavour is walking down the street with the Goal of meeting a friend, but they are absent, then your Endeavour is a Failure, as the goal has not been achieved. However, if, in the same scenario, you find a wad of money lying on the floor in all its hypothetical glory, then I for one would still consider the Endeavour a Success, even if the Goal has never been achieved. What I am getting at is that there are alternative benefits to an Endeavour to that of the initial Goal, but whether they contribute to the status of Success or Failure is up for debate. I remain undecided, but feel obliged in my position of the one to actual create the dilemna of deciding to at least explore the implications of siding with either decision. Let us say that it is believed that alternative benefits to an Endeavour being fulfilled do in fact contribute to whether it is a Success or Failure, then I think it is quite possible to argue for a number of scenarios that there is no such thing as a complete Failure in any Endeavour. Any task you undertake, whether you get what you intended or not, accumulates life experience. You have learnt something from your Failure, unaware of it though you may be, and that, in beautiful irony, makes it not a Failure at all, or at least not a complete one. You will always be gaining more and more, whatever you do. Sure, some things can be lost, but at this -instant-, you are gaining something from reading this. I'm not quite big-headed enough to mean by that that my words are in some way a way through which you can gain some glorious knowledge, because for all I know I'm talking complete male cow faeces, and have been for quite a while, but even if I am you're gaining life experience and learning life lessons all the time, be it that "This fool has no clue what he's talking about; I won't listen to him in future" or "Ooh, that's quite interesting, I shall consider that in future". In this way, it becomes clear that no complete Failure can exist. Alternatively, one could argue that it is not the Endeavour, and experiences found within it that needs to be determined as a Failure or Success, but the Goal itself. The finding of the wad of money in the earlier example would not be a Failure or a Success, merely an occurance, along with any misfortune which could befell the person walking to meet their friend. Instead it is the actual event of meeting the friend which needs to be dteremined as a Success or Failure, in the case of the example the Goal of meeting the friend would have Failed, and the wad of money is completely seperate to this. Ultimately, this is very similar to the textbook definition, so I won't explore this any further.

I feel this post didn't really get very far, and could be explored in much more detail, as only one interesting observation was really made and that itself was rather basic, so I may look back at it later.