Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
Samuel Beckett, an Irish
avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, once remarked:”Try
again. Fail again. Fail better.” This is one of my favorite quotations.
I first saw this in the American TV show Criminal Minds. When I saw this, I
felt like I was suddenly enlightened. I regarded this sentence as one of my
life maxim as soon as I saw the quotation on the TV, because I think this
sentence has much positive power and profound truth which can inspire me to a
greater effort.
I think the quotation has three
main meanings. First, according to “Try again” and “Fail again”, it encourages
people to try to do things and not to be afraid of making mistakes. The best
example to support this quotation is how Thomas Edison invented the light bulb.
Everybody knows that light bulb was not invented in one night. Edison had experienced
thousands of times of failures when conducting the experiment. He spent
thousands of hours trying to find the right filament in his lab. There is no
doubt that he did not dare to make mistakes. Suppose he was afraid of making
mistakes and was not able to face the failure, how could the light bulb be
invented?
Second, “Fail better”
suggests people have to learn from the failures that they have experienced. It
is just like another proverb, “Failure is the mother of success”. Although
daring to make mistakes and to face the failures are important, to learn from
the pass failing experience is also of great importance. If a person only dare
to make mistakes but never has thought about why he has made such mistakes, it
is hard for him to perform better. Certainly he will “fail again”, but never “fail
better”. So, we should look
backward to think and learn. This is also a key answer to why the civilization
is always making progress. Let`s take a look at the history of our civilization.
Mistakes and faults that man had made in their history are often seen. Slavery,
superstitions, wars are all kinds of mistakes people have made. However,
fortunately, there are lots of people who would look back to the history and
said it was wrong and corrected it. Abraham Lincoln abolished the slavery. Most
countries abolished the centralization system. It is clear that human are
correcting it mistakes and improving its civilization all the time.
And third, what the Samuel did not say is that,
after several times of “Fail better”, people will finally achieve success. Maybe another point the Samuel
wants to indicate is that, after so many times of failure, people should
persist in doing what they are doing and what they love. I would like to
connect this with another great saying:“No pains. No gains.” For instance, Steve
Jobs, a talent in designing and inventing, delivered a moving speech about “do
what we love”. He mentioned in the speech that when we genuinely love what we
do, it doesn`t matter that we fail. He came up with his experience after being
fired by the Apple: He felt relaxed and light in mind to be a beginner and then
he started several companies one of which was bought by Apple for its great
technology which is used for apple`s revival. In his case, I see his great
persistence in what he loved and what he was doing. He still sacrificed himself
in the designing technology after he was fired. How gritty he was! His story
can perfectly demonstrate the significance of persistence.
I find these
three points very inspiring. After fathom this great sentence, I notice that I
have nothing to lose and all I have to do is to face the challenges and
difficulties in my life and try my best to overcome them，no matter what the
result will be. Also, I have to find out what caused the failure and how to
perform better this time without making mistakes. For instance, when I am
trying to solve the difficult mathematic problems, I just try to solve the
problem using my own understanding of the questions. If the answer is not
right, then part of my reasoning or calculating must be wrong. Before I do it
for the second time, I have to spend time to figure out where is the mistake. Thus,
I will know how to solve the problem myself. And throughout the process of
solving the problem, I don`t dare to make mistakes and all I have to do is to
one hundred percent concentrate on problems.
Try again.
Fail again. Fail better. This great sentence reveals the truth in our lives. It
tells us to be bold in exploring, to be brave in making mistakes, to be
profound in rethinking, and to be persistent in practicing.
(Sorry I did not attend the Monday class which is about the articles, so I do not know whether my usage is right or wrong. If it is wrong, please point it out. Thank you.)
