DAY TWO

Hello again.

Sometimes I marvel how quickly I burned through my first life…

When it ended I felt like a middle aged character from a Dickens novel. The big difference being that I was barely 20 years old.

As good as I was at weaving my complicated persona to cover up the fear and weakness inside me, the threads weren’t strong enough to hold it all together. And then it happened.

As the clock struck midnight on the last day of 1977 and a group of young people stumbled blindly into the New Year as I had done the past three years myself, I turned my back on the party and stepped out onto a small stoop on the corner of a main street in my hometown, less than half a mile from the hospital where my first child would be born someday and breathed the fresh air of a new day.

I often feel badly for people whose only experience of the dramatic comes in a bottle or a pipe or a needle or a pill. I lived that drama till I was naked and wounded with nowhere to hide.

And I know so many people who live vicariously through books or songs or movies or cartoons as if they really know what it feels like to be free. And I love those people but I can’t lie to them.

Until you’ve stood on the precipice of extinction and looked fully into the abyss of your own failures, you’re still living a cliché founded on a lie. I wish I could take away your pain but some paths you’ve got to walk on your own.

I have a friend that lost a finger one day but it saved his soul. I lost a friend one time but it saved my life. Too many have lost so much more for so little.

My road has sorrow but it always ends in joy. Sometimes there’s even joy without the sorrow but there’s never sorrow without the joy. If you’re not on this road, isn’t it time you took the red pill?

@ 2010 Joseph Ricciardi Jr

Failure - It Actually is an Option

Have you heard the phrase: “Failure is NOT an option”? Well it makes for a great line in a movie but in life many times failure is a great option.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m no pessimist or quitter; I like winning as much as anyone.

But when you’ve done the best that you can in business or a hobby or perhaps even a relationship and you’re still not getting where you want to, it just might be okay to admit that you failed. Now I didn’t say give up. I said to admit failure. There’s a difference, subtle as it may be.

As long as you can make a difference, you should persevere. It was Winston Churchill who said: “Never, never, never give up” when facing the german attacks during the WWII.

It was also Winston Churchill who said: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” Churchill understood that at times, we fail, plain and simple. And it’s the ability to get back up and into the race again that is the important point.

People ask me all the time how I am able to juggle three businesses, a family, hobbies, part-time work and other interests. It’s an easy answer: I’m used to failing and it doesn’t scare me.

But I know and have known many men and woman who are paralyzed by the fear of failure and in that state never try to accomplish anything unusual or of great value. Fearing to fail they never do but then again they never do succeed either.

I have known both: failure and success and I can honestly say that there isn’t much different between the two except the press you receive after the fact. I’m just as scared sometimes to succeed as I am to fail. I thank God for His Grace that allows me to stay in the game despite my less than stellar record at the plate.

So if you’ve always wanted to do something but have been afraid to fail, well don’t let that stop you. And if you’ve been praying for a miracle like David did with his offspring with Bathsheba but the baby’s died anyway, well get out of the ashes, put off your sackcloth, wash up and get a meal. Failure is NOT the end of life. Sometimes it’s just another stop on the road.

Enjoy the following poem by Edgar Guest. God bless you.

The Loss Is Not So Great
Edgar Guest

It is better as it is: I have failed but I can sleep;
Though the pit I now am in is very dark and deep
I can walk to-morrow's streets and can meet to-morrow's men
Unashamed to face their gaze as I go to work again.

I have lost the hope I had; in the dust are all my dreams,
But my loss is not so great or so dreadful as it seems;
I made my fight and though I failed I need not slink away
For I do not have to fear what another man may say.

They may call me over-bold, they may say that I was frail;
They may tell I dared too much and was doomed at last to fail;
They may talk my battle o'er and discuss it as they choose,
But I did no brother wrong--I'm the only one to lose.

It is better as it is: I have kept my self-respect.
I can walk to-morrow's streets meeting all men head erect.
No man can charge his loss to a pledge I did not keep;
I have no shame to regret: I have failed, but I can sleep.

@ 2008 Joseph Ricciardi Jr