I have a talent for failing. It is a weird talent to have and it actually took me years to see it as a talent. It first started with my own mother persuading me take on swimming. At the time, I didn’t have much reason to refuse so I just said yes, and I diligently went to my swimming classes twice a week. My mother was successful in planting her first seed for my failure.But we will get to the swimming later on. My mother was very sneaky in her ways of developing my skills. When I was little if I wanted to try something, she would do all that she can to allow me to try that particular thing. when I was little, I was allowed to do kendo, judo, taekwondo, acting, playing the tennis so much more.This ample amount of activties provided me many materials to failing. This was exactly the habit and mindset that cultivated my skills.
To fail, you must first try. It’s that simple. So, I tried and failed a lot. I can’t count how many contest I've tried out and failed and all sports team that I have tried out and failed, of course, there’s too many embarrassing moments of mine where I tried to improve myself and failed. There were the contests I won, there is a sports team that I I made the cut and there are even moments of embarrassments that turned to personal triumphs. And then I’ve realized that success or failure is a number 's game. If I fail a lot, there’s bound to succeed once or twice. Also, failing itself isn’t all so bad.
After all, success or failure is just label that we use to label events. It’s just a subjective matter. Failing a test doesn’t really mean failure, it could be looked as a success in telling you what you didn’t know about that subject. Going back to swimming, my mother was successful planting the first seed because swimming is my first real failure. The swimming class became incredibly rigorous as time went by. I found out later that I swam with older kids who were preparing to become professional swimmers. Naturally, these practices were intense and grueling. They were accompanied by intimidating stopwatches. The stopwatches were what killed me in the end. I just couldn’t make my freestyle time limit and this went on for whole year, until I just quit.
I just quit and my mother didn’t say anything. She wasn’t happy or mad. All she said to me were, “You’re going to fail a lot in your life and quitting is only going to help that.” Honestly, I’ve been using my talent for failing too well lately so I needed a break. So I don’t know how many times I rewrote this script, wrote other scripts and just simulated what will happen when I’m up here on stage.
What if I just come up on stage and blank out? Well nothing will actually happen, yes I will be humiliated in front of all of you and I probably won’t get a prize but absolutely nothing will happen. The same thing happened to me in swimming. I quit my semi-professional swimming career and I swore that I will never wear swim trunks again. But when I did, I became a certified lifeguard, a water polo player, and win 2nd prize for a swimming competition. It’s a grand achievement for a player who couldn’t make his freestyle time limit. And then I realized my few successes because of my failures.So I will enjoy my failures like my successes. Because both of them are what make up my life. And then I tend to have as many of both as possible. Thank you.