Last year my parents celebrated their 70th anniversary

As we were preparing for the family reunion and party that would mark this remarkable event, we interviewed them about their life. One of the things that really struck me was their repeated observations that their greatest failures led to their greatest successes. When I remember back to their lives, I realize that they were right, and that this has been true of my own life.
But we’ll stay with my mom and dad because it’s hard to turn your back on seven decades of love and experience. They had four kids – born within six years – and reared them on one nonunion salary; we were barely wealthy enough to be considered working class. My dad was a pipefitter/welder and a working foreman in steel shops for 40 years. My mom stayed at home with us, but didn’t give up on her dreams of being a writer and a bookkeeper; in fact, while rearing us, she took correspondence courses in bookkeeping and accounting, which qualified her for her 30-year career when we moved into school. She also is a writer, whose freelance work paid for every vacation we were ever able to take.

Despite their hard times, they were able to retire comfortably and even travel beyond their wildest dreams. This was primarily because my dad’s last job was as the foreman in a start-up fabricating plant that, fortunately, made it; to help the new company get going, he agreed to take a reduced salary and shares in the company. That leap of faith paid off: the company did well, giving my parents a nice retirement income and investments. But Daddy wouldn’t have been available or even interested in that opportunity if the job he’d taken the year before had not turned into an abysmal failure at a company that ultimately went bankrupt.

What my parents had said was true: their greatest opportunities and successes would never had come about had they not had their greatest failures – and been desperate enough to be willing to jump at anything.As my brothers and I listened to their stories, we realized that this had happened over and over again in their lives as a couple and later in our own lives. The secretarial job I took after I was laid off the very day I filed for divorce ultimately led into a new and fulfilling lifetime career in which I continue to work. Grant you, I spent two weeks in a fetal position on my couch right after my lay off and had to work in the trenches for several years, but eventually, that unplanned career exceeded my dreams.

I would imagine that each of us can think of similar redeemed failures either in our own lives or in those of friends or family members. In all of these instances, very few of us really dream of moving on to someplace else. We just find ourselves with a bag of lemons – or worse – and just do the best we can with what we’ve got at the time.