"If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?"
I find this quote very rhetorical. It is actually a very philosophical question based on a play on words.
On the one hand, you could take the quote as thus: you tried to fail, and you succeeded at failing. In this case, the only success is that you accomplished your venture...to fail. Is this really a success then? The ultimate ending is failure, so could it really be considered a success?
On the other hand, you could take the quote in the opposite way: you tried to fail at something, but instead succeeded. Instead of accomplishing your venture of failure, you did the opposite and instead succeeded. Was this really a success then, since you did not accomplish what you set out to do? But you succeeded in something, even if it wasn't what you intended.
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This is a hard question to answer. Even in thinking about this, I couldn't come up with an example of each situation. But rhetorically, this speaks volumes. The writing of it is very simple. It easily sticks in the audience's mind. It seems like it is easily understood as well. Yet when you think about it, the question is actually much more complex, as I've described. There is no clear-cut answer to the question. That fact leads the audience to continually contemplate the question. Speaking for myself, I have been thinking about it since I recently came across it. And I know in high school, in my creative writing class, we had lengthy discussions about it.
In the end, I believe this quote is a type of "glass half full or half empty" type of question. The way you understand the quote is reflective of your outlook on the entire situation. So which is it for you? Did you fail, or did you succeed?
I think the best way to answer this question would be to define what being successful truly means. It means to be prosperous in what you do, so negative or positive of your attempt, the success would be the positive of anything you've done, regardless of your plans. Many people become successful at things they've never expected to do, and so I would lean to the idea that even when trying to fail and instead you've done the opposite, its still an expression of success.
ReplyDeleteIf you try to fail (which I never really know when that would apply) I suppose you could say that you have succeeding in failing. However, I never see intentional failure as success. It's an oxymoron. Success is not parrallel to failure. Success is in a rhelm of its own. If one were to try to fail, they might as not try at all. Faulire can come without trying.
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