Václav Havel on How to Hold Your Failure

Few things in life are more devastating than to give something your all and still fail. Not the “fail better” of startup culture, not the “fail forward” of self-help, not the failure that is childhood’s fulcrum of learning, not the inspired mistakes that propel creative risk, but simply that helpless and harrowing moment when you face the abyss between your will and your powers, your values and your choices, your ideal self and your real self. It is without redemption, such failure. But it need not be without reward. Admitting failure, especially moral failure, is hard enough — to others,… ...