Brenne Brown wrote a book called “Daring Greatly”. In the pages even before the introduction, she quotes a portion of Theodore Roosevelt’s speech from April 1910. In her book, It reads:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again,
Because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause;
Who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly…”
I love that quote, and I love Brenne Brown’s book – Daring Greatly. It is a book about vulnerability. She asks, “what price are we paying when we shut down and disengage?”
We always have a choice, but sometimes the options are clearer. The stakes are higher.
I love Roosevelt’s quote. What I get out of that is that we may be working really hard to accomplish (or survive) something, and even though things are not going well, to the point that we are “marred by dust and sweat and blood, striving valiantly, erring, coming short again and again” at least we know that we are daring greatly.
Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted – one of my favourite sayings. These concepts remind me of the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25. The master goes away on a journey and gives 5 talents (I understand this is a certain amount of money) to the first servant, 2 to the second servant and 1 to the third servant – according to their abilities. When the master returns, he calls the servants to see how they have managed the money he gave them. The first and second servants doubled what they had been given. However, the third servant was afraid to do anything, and buried his talent in the ground. The master called him “wicked and lazy” and gave his talent to the servant who began with 5.
In my mind, this is an answer to Brenne Brown’s question, “what price are we paying when we shut down and disengage?” I would say burying your “gift” in the ground and doing nothing qualifies as shutting down and disengaging. What if servant number three had “dared greatly”? What if he had tried something, became “marred by dust and sweat and blood, strived valiantly, erred, came up short again and again”? Perhaps it’s not the result that matters, but the fact that we did something, tried our best to the point of feeling a bit beat up over it. “Even if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly…”
Getting a result we didn’t want, is experience. Shutting down in fear is failing.
So many times in my15 year journey as a widow with 3 kids, I felt “marred by dust and sweat and blood”. The relentless demands on my time and resources, the “getting worse” when I didn’t think things could possibly get worse and having to keep on keeping on anyway. Like the year our septic system failed. I was already on a “high speed single parent treadmill” doing our regular life. The septic system issue meant I also had to take all the laundry to a laundromat, do dishes in a bucket and dump the water outside, have the kids shower at the karate school, and use my friend’s shower after she had gone to work. What was my option? To replace the system would have cost $30,000 that I didn’t have, so I decided to do the system treatments the septic system people recommended and barely use the system while we waited for that to work. And hope that sewage didn’t back up on the basement floor in the process (which it sometimes did).
After a couple of months (thank goodness that happened during the summer and not the winter!), the treatment began to work and our septic system was working well again. We changed some of our processes to not stress the system (like not doing all the laundry on the same day), and life went back to normal.
A failing septic system is a result I definitely did not want. Shutting down in fear was not an option. I did not bury my talent in the ground – I did the best I could. I had to “dare greatly”…do things that were previously unthinkable. In the end, I did know the “triumph of high achievement”, which in that case was returning to the old normal. By showing up and doing what needed to be done to manage in the moment. It’s funny how the times in my life where I felt pushed to the absolute edge and kept going anyway, are the times I now look back on with fondness.
“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again… if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly…”
Effort over outcome. Dare greatly.
Photo by Chris wade NTEZICIMPA
