The scars on the drum: A Nunyãdume reflection on failure, courage and the audacity to try

The young person may see a failure as the end of the road because there are not yet enough travelled roads behind him to know how often yesterday’s disappointment becomes tomorrow’s turning point. With the passage of years comes the wisdom of hindsight, the discovery that some doors had to close, some journeys had to fail, and some dreams had to break before we could understand where life was taking us. We begin to see that some of the things we once called failures were lessons; some were redirections; some were warnings; and some were the very wounds through which wisdom entered. The years do not necessarily make us wiser merely because we have grown older. But if we have paid attention, the years give us something youth cannot yet possess in equal measure: the long view, the wisdom of retrospect.