Celebrating Failure

Celebrating Failure

Of (little) Brothers and Brunches

I have been pretty serious up till this point, but it's coming upon the holiday season so I am going to interject some levity. I have been, thus far without success, attempting to convince my younger brother to eat his food within a reasonable time-frame. He has been left in my charge for the past few months (partly responsible for why I am taking online only classes this semester) and I spent a little over a week as his sole supervisor for much of the day. During this time I was frustrated constantly with the fact that he refused to eat his food in under an hour. This became particularly salient when I was the one doing the cooking. Watching as food I had spent half an hour preparing to my best ability (pretty darn good if I don't say so myself) goes uneaten for three hours is not a pleasant experience. Add to this the fact that he had a tendency of procrastinating on his FLVS class work and I clearly could not allow him to waste so much time staring at a full plate.

I would like to end this by saying that the issue was fixed and my brother finally learned the art of eating. Sadly, this is not the case. Despite my best efforts (mostly amounting to frustrated groans and exasperated sighs) I was unable to convince my charge to go about imbibing sustenance in a more time efficient manner. He continues to take as long as possible to eat even the smallest of lunches and teeniest of dinners. Only breakfast go by in a reasonable time frame. Thankfully the return of my mother from helping my younger (the middle) brother move into his new abode for college has lifted the onus from my shoulders.
Reflection?
Failure is a teaching experience that opens the way for future successes. Every failure is a disguised opportunity and should be seen as the isolated occurrence that it often is. The way I see it, the fault is not in failing, but in failing the same way twice. As for any affect on my philosophy this class may have had, honestly, it would be minimal. I have been an avid student of philosophy for almost half my life now. My personal beliefs on many varied topics have been formed over the course of years of reflection and questioning. It takes a very compelling argument to change my mind at this point, and while it has been done many times before this class lacks the deep philosophical underpinnings to seriously impact my worldview. This is not a bad thing, for the purposes of leadership questions about the meaning of life, freedom, power, ethics, metaphysics, etc... are not essential and would only ad unneeded complexity to the subject.