Oh, What a Night - Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons
Haha whoa exact opposite of that other quote…
“In 20 years, you will be more disappointed by what you didn’t do than by what you did.”
-Mark Twain
Haha, don’t agree, but it’s pretty funny.
“Better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.”
-Mark Twain
Claire De Lune- Debussy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9f4nYoCxy8&feature=BFa&list=WLBC683E69EC514396&lf=BFp
from one of the best movies ever
edit: not twilight LOLL older movie
Failures
It’s cliche to say, I know, that we all make failure out to be much worse than it actually is. But too often, we are afraid to do things, to take leaps out of our comfort zone, to even try because of failure. Fear of failure. Why are we afraid to fail? We’re afraid of getting hurt. We’re afraid of looking bad in front of other people, or even in front of ourselves. But it goes deeper than looks. We’re afraid that something we invest so much time, effort, and heart into goes to waste. We try hard with our end goal in mind throughout the process, so that at the end, it’s only reasonable to expect that our effort has paid off and our goal has been attained. But as sir Winston Churchill said, “No success is permanent, and no failure is fatal.”
I just finished watching the Knicks game against the Timberwolves because Jeremy Lin was playing. He was having an off day today. I watched him after every easy shot he missed. Not discouraged, and still determined. The crowd booed him because they were on the territory of the Timberwolves, but his head was held high, and his feet were firmly on the ground, ready to win. Throughout the game, he scored something like 19 points, but he missed plenty of easy layups that would have boosted him up to the high 20s or even the 30s on a good day. At the end of the game, there were less than 20 seconds to go, tied 98 to 98, and I was on my roommate’s bed, sitting up, watching the game live intently. Lin was fouled. The whole game, Rubio (Lin’s defender) had successfully been on Lin’s ass, making sure opportunities were taken away, and Lin’s offense wouldn’t be too effective against the Timberwolves. But Lin was at the line now. He had two chances to gain the lead for the Knicks. First shot. Way off. Commentators started talking about how tired he must be after going through this whole game. I took a moment, stepped back, and thought about the game as a whole. If Lin was having an off day today, and he still led the Knicks to win as a star player on the team, how high will he rise? I focused on the game. Lin dribbled, taking his sweet time as I knew he should. He shot it. But something about that shot left me at peace. I wasn’t nervous. I didn’t even “expect” it to go in. I knew it would go in. Why? I don’t know. God? Maybe. I sat back smiling. Something about him made me think anything was possible.
I decided to look him up on Wikipedia. It’s so easy for us to have an unreasonably perfect image of people because of the one or two-time impressions that they make on us. The media uses this as a tool to get us to worship celebrities. We only see what they want us to see. But everyone struggles. Jeremy Lin’s dream school was Stanford. He wanted to play basketball for them. And I know, big deal, he got rejected from the team and went to Harvard instead, where he would be on the team for sure. But I think to step into his shoes, he had worked so hard on his basketball skills, his grades, and developed so much discipline, only to be accepted as a walk-on to his dream school. He led Palo Alto High school to a 36-1 record and became the Division II champions. Every single California basketball publication picked him as the runaway choice of player of the year. Why did he get rejected from the college team? Did he get rejected because he’s an asian basketball player? Probably. Sure, people have been in worse positions, but this by no means was a success to him.
Playing for the Golden State Warriors. He was a benchwarmer. No one gave him a chance. No one really had expectations for him in a league that no asian has ever come close to dominating before. He was put on for a few minutes, and as soon as he showed that he wasn’t performing well, he was taken off. His status as a rookie and the high pressure Asian American fans gave him didn’t help.
Back to the future. Star player of the New York Knicks. The coach refused to take him off the court, even on an off day like this. Everyone goes through failures, and everyone knows that life goes on after them. Failing to get into a college, or an acapella group, or a business fraternity isn’t what prevents people from being successful. It’s the mindset they have after that. Discouragement has always been such a strong force against talented people. We try, we fail, we get discouraged. The more discouraged we get, the less effort we put into trying. The less effort we put into trying, the more we fail. The more we fail, the more discouraged we get. See the pattern? People with so much potential shy down after one failure, two failures. Sometimes, they assume they’re not meant for something. Sometimes, they just don’t want to get hurt again. But trying again is just another choice, like many choices we make in our daily lives. It takes courage and a leap of faith to trust that things will turn out okay. To try and to break out of the cycle. After all,
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” -John Wooden
