What is Failure?

This week I'm attending Late Summer Honors at BYU. A few days ago, our professor asked an interesting question- that is, what is failure. It's a surprisingly complicated question, so, of course, I wanted to blog about it.

Looking it up in the dictionary was interesting. One definition said it was "an omission of occurrence or performance; specifically : a failing to perform a duty or expected action." This was the only definition that seemed to not coincide with my personal definition, that is, "to not meet with success." Although it does in a way, this first definition seems to indicate a lack of all action, perhaps out of fear of failure!

So often, isn't that what we do? Fail to act because of fear we will fail at the act? But this suggests that perhaps in not acting, we fail just as much as if we had tried and fallen short.

So much of failure depends on the individual's definition of success. Is success measured by a certain number of dollars, a certain act performed to a specific degree, or is success in the attempt? Is success in trying, even if it does not reach the original goal?

I also wonder if an individual can succeed and fall at the same time, in a way, as if there's success in effort but failure to reach the goal, as if there were levels of success and therefore levels of failure. It's an interesting concept to be sure.

Of course some failures are worse than others for sure, but isn't it because the success was so much greater, so much more lauded than any other? Whether by others or in our own mind, the success got built up, and then of course the failure did as well.

Failure, in the end, is defined by success. And isn't our idea of success up to us? It depends on what we decide. So in the end, it's all in our own heads.