Pain and Failure

Have you ever had an accident, been injured, or felt the pain of failure? If you’re like me and active at all, then you’ve probably been hurt through physical pain and stung by failure many times in your life. Whenever I got hurt, my Dad would always say, “If you use your head you won’t get hurt!” However, it’s human nature to suffer pain at times, but it’s never appreciated. Then again… maybe it should be!

Last Saturday, I was doing a large and very difficult Parking Lot Light Pole Inspection at a major shopping center in Ventura. I asked my son, David, to help me with the job and we decided to leave at 4:45am in order to beat the traffic. The traffic worked out fine on the way there, but the job turned out to be one of the hardest we have ever tackled.

I was fortunate to have my son helping me because he is extremely fit and strong. So he was able to lift the heavy cast aluminum pole base covers at the base of each pole and he was also able to cut down thick thorn bushes that were blocking our access to the base of the poles. It was hard work, but we kept at it for seven straight hours. At that point, we only had one pole to go, and of course it was completely buried in a hedge with thick, super sharp thorns.

We were both hacking away at the hedge when all of a sudden I heard a loud noise right next to me. My son yelled out, “Wow, that almost hit you in the head!” When I asked him what it was, he crawled down underneath the hedge and pulled out a really heavy ball shaped 2-pound piece of solid aluminum. It had apparently fallen off of the decorative Light Fixture at the top of the pole. It was a near miss for sure, with potentially very serious consequences.

That was a close call and it got me thinking… You know that old saying, “Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger!” Well, here’s my new take on it, “Whatever doesn’t kill you, should make you smarter!” Therefore, I’m going to take my Dad’s advice to use my head… and the next time I go to work… put a hard hat on it!

Pain and failure should be our teachers, not our undertakers. 

They are temporary detours not dead-end streets.

~ William Arthur Ward