"Fail Better..."

I heard a quote recently from Samuel Beckett, author of play Waiting for Godot, that said, "Ever Tried. Ever Failed. No Matter. Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better." When I first saw this, I was a little taken aback by the words "fail again," and then was just plain confused by "fail better." I wondered how it was possible to "fail better." What does this mean? Well, after some thinking, it finally hit me. To me, "failing better" means learning from the mistakes you made previously and getting a little bit closer to do things right. It means improving, but still making mistakes. But this time, you have a better quality of mistake, a mistake that once you learned the lesson you need to learn from it, you are one step closer to a success. Once you hit this point, it is essential to not give up. You have to keep going until the mistake turns into something beneficial, something that is not a mistake anymore. This kind of works with something that Oprah Winfrey said: "When you know better, you do better." This statement fits at the end of Beckett's statement; Fail better, because when you know better, you do better. Because failing makes you learn. And when you learn, you gain knowledge you never had before. And when you possess this knowledge, you can put it into action to be a better person. So why am I going on and on about this? Honestly, I am giving you advice, dear reader. But to be even more honest, I am trying to give myself advice too, because like many people, my biggest fear is to fail. To fail at school, to fail at being a good person, and to fail in life. So what exactly is my advice? It's okay to not be perfect. Because in those moments when something doesn't happen the way you imagined, you learn something from it to better yourself in the future. Perfection doesn't gain knowledge. Experience and a little bit of failure does. It's okay to not know what you are doing. It's okay to try to figure things out and hit some problems along the way. Because it is in this process that you begin to think, you begin to fight, you begin to learn and do what you can to make things right. And from this, it shapes who you are and improve who you are on the inside first, and then works into your actions and everyday life. My hope with this piece is to reach anyone that is like me, that struggles with accepting setbacks or "failures" or anything of that nature, and to help you realize that it is not the end of the world. Life will go on, and it will go on in a better way because you have just learned something else that will be a valuable tool in your life. So if you're like me, or even if you dont share these exact feelings, I hope you took something away from this. As always, if you have any comments, please feel free to write to me below. And thank you, dear readers, for sticking with me on my journey thus far. -That University Girl