When we visited the National Air and Space Museum recently,
I noticed a tote bag in the gift shop with these words: “Failure is not an option.” Although the quote is attributed to Gene
Kranz, the NASA flight director of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, he never
said it. Actor Ed Harris, who portrayed
Kranz in the Apollo 13 film, does use the line and Kranz himself adopted it for
his autobiography.
The phrase itself is a great motivator but in reality we
must admit that failure is always an option in any endeavor that involves risk
or creativity. Failure is part of life. Someone
said, “The saddest thing in the world is not to fail but not to have tried.” If we risk greatly, there is always the
chance that we will fail . . . and that’s all right. It is in failing that we learn and grow.
The failure of the Apollo 13 space craft created the
opportunity for success in finding ways to adapt existing hardware and systems
onboard the space craft to save the crew.
Kranz and his team were challenged to new levels of creativity and
improvisation in order to keep the three-man crew alive and return them safely
to earth. They brought success out of
failure.
Failure is always a possibility; the important thing is what
we do with it. If we do not learn from
our mistakes, then failure is inevitable, but we have the opportunity to learn
and grow with each failure.
From a Christian perspective, it is not a sin to fail. The
sin is not learning from failure. We can
be grateful that our God is the God of second chances. No matter how far we fall, God picks us
up.
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