Our lives require failure.

Like our lungs require oxygen.

And when I find the world around me lacking in the resources that I need,

it's because in so many ways I have forgotten to breathe.

To step out my walls of comfort and breathe in

lessons waiting to be taught by the greatest of teachers.

Life. Life, the unpredictable and often unremarkable miracle.

The book that reveals itself through experience that tells tales only in hindsight.

Our world is a book in which we choose our own ending,

and so we must fail,

because failing means living and we were meant to live.

We must fail because every failure is the mark of a poet, an artist, or an author

bringing this story one step closer to its resolution, continually walking up to a blank

wall and making a mark, a single trivial mark. A mark that's misunderstood at

best, but likely scoffed at, ridiculed. But each mark gives meaning to the one before it.

These marks, they become chapters, become narrative shifts, become stories.

Every failure you throw against this wall becomes part of a mural.

It's an element of beauty before the work can even be deemed beautiful.

Yet we continually misunderstand. When you hang your head in disappointment, when you see

only the smudge of paint you through against that wall, you are oblivious to the fact that you're

making something meaningful. So here is my challenge to you. I dare you in the midst of the Mona Lisa you are creating to see it before it's done.

I dare you to be strong enough to fail not just once, but over and over and over again, I dare you to keep your eyes focused,

...