Life isn't easy. To quote one of my favorite movies, The Princess Bride, "Life is pain, anyone who says differently is selling something." The idea that life sucks sometimes is one of the Four Noble Truths in Buddhism; "Life is suffering." Life is going to throw a lot at you, and ready or not, you're going to have to deal with it. The good news is, you can make your life easier. Every time life throws you a curve ball and you swing and miss, you get a chance to learn from your mistake. You get a chance to make yourself better.

Learning things the hard way is more valuable in the long run. Do you use an oven mitt when getting the brownies out of the oven because your mom told you to or because you burned your hand once and it hurt? Did you stop texting and driving because your high school showed you that video where everyone died or because you almost hit someone while trying to prove your multitasking prowess? Do you bring a jacket to the movie theater because your friend suggested it or because you froze your butt off when you went without one? These are minor examples, but they're applicable to most people. We usually mess up big time and don't let it happen again. Sometimes we spend more money than we have and go into debt. Sometimes we take out our anger on the wrong person and lose a friend. Sometimes we make bad decisions and end up having to pay the consequences. Learning things the hard way is a fundamental part of who we are, but it isn't a bad thing. The key to making bad experiences valuable is making sure that "learning" is one of the outcomes of the experience.

If you steal something and the store camera catches you and the police pick you up, you made a really stupid decision. You had the money to pay for the candy bar or the nail polish or the phone charger. It wasn't an item you truly needed, but you allowed greed to take over you for a few minutes. Fine. Whatever. The deal is, going through the judicial process, you need to learn something. You need to learn that your actions have consequences and that stealing things hurts other people. That $5 item has to be paid for somehow. That $5 could come straight out of someone's paycheck, or prevent a company from hiring another person because you're probably not the only one stealing $5 nail polish. You sit in court, you listen, you feel guilty, you accept your punishment, and you move on. You become a better person. That is the idea behind our justice system. That should be the idea behind our failure.

We are a species that is destined to experience failure, but we have to make the conscious decision each time we face the crushing blow of defeat to not give up. We have to decide to get up, move on, and learn. We have to make the decision to allow that failure to be a part of ourselves. When we do that, accept that we aren't perfect and that we aren't always going to win, we set ourselves up for future success. We set ourselves up for a brighter, happier life.