Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Someone once remarked upon the huge number of failures which Thomas Edison had racked up in his quest for a practical storage battery: fifty thousand failed experiments before finally achieving any results. "Results?" the inventor replied. "Why, I have gotten a lot of results. I know fifty thousand things that won't work!"

50,000 so-called "failed" attempts. How many of us would do likewise in the search for the one successful attempt? Perhaps this is one aspect that separates so many of us from the "genius" minds of our time...

And to the inventor, it was not 50,000 failed attempts, but rather 50,000 concrete results. How many of us would frame our work or experimenting in such fashion? Again, perhaps this is another aspect that separates so many of us from the "genius" minds of our time...

Perhaps this is one of the common traits that exudes through successful projects, successful partnerships, successful marriages and successful lives: the determination to attempt again and again - and to see all attempts as concrete results, regardless of the desired outcome.

We are searchers all in our life journeys. And it is unknown terrain for all of us. So why our incessant need to "get it right" the first time? We are searchers all so let us relish the attempts again and again. Let us celebrate the concrete results... for that is what gives us, the searchers, purpose.

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Post Note: Thomas Alva Edison was noted for his prolific output: some thirteen hundred inventions in all. Among some of those inventions were the electric light bulb, the gramophone, the motion picture camera, and the carbon transmitter which facilitated the use of Alexander Graham Bell's telephone.

And one final bit of trivia of Thomas Edison: His very last words were, "Oh my, it's very beautiful over there." Even in his final breath, Mr. Edison remained a true searcher and discoverer.