"If We Are Afraid of Failure, We Move Nowhere."

I never understood phrases like "It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all." And I still don't understand it. If you love and lose it, then you're sad. If you never love, then you're at least okay.

Just saying that so you don't relate that quote to some other examples I'm going to use.

In my last post, I said that children do not know their limits, so they are not afraid to push them. This is related to that, in a way. Children have no fear of falling, so they are not afraid to run.

If we lived in fear for our entire lives, then we'd never get anything done:

If we were always scared to get an answer wrong on a test, we'd leave it blank it it'd definitely be wrong.

My Nana has a mug that says "When I do it right, nobody notices. When I do it wrong, nobody forgets." The same applies for ourselves. We may remember every question we got wrong on a test, but we hardly glance at the ones we got right.

If we were always scared to break our ankles, we would never take a step.

Why do we hold on to our mistakes? So we do not make them again. "So I know what to study for the next test." "So I know what I need to improve upon.

If we were always scared that our water was poisoned, we'd never drink.

Is it bad? I don't think so. It's the only way we can evolve, not just over millenniums, but over decades, years, seconds. Failures are good. Failures are a sign of progress. It's better to get an answer marked wrong than to go about life thinking the wrong things.

The only thing that holds us back is fear. "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

When you fail, you improve. If you fear to fail, you only hold yourself back. Fear is nameless, unreasoning, and unjustified.