Success Is Never Final… Nor Failure

In a sense, “success is never final.” The moment we close the books on one year we open them on another, and compare our performance with the past. In business we look back and compare costs and production and prices and profits. And no matter how good last year was, there is this year now to consider.

We have to keep at it, for life is a process, and not a finished product, and there is no moment at which we can say that the picture is completed.

And there is no age at which a man can safely relax his standards or be careless of his conduct. It isn’t enough to do something well once. We have to repeat our performance. In a sense, “success is never final.” This may seem discouraging at first, but actually it is evidence of eternal continuance.

And there is this further comforting fact also to consider: In the same sense in which success is never final, neither need failure be final. Failure need never be final so long as a person can improve his performance. Failure need never be final so long as a person has the spirit of repentance.

Some things pertaining to people can’t be so easily seen on charts and graphs and books and balance sheets. But there is a kind of sense inside that tells us whether we’re going forward or back, or behaving better or worse, in the things that really make a man⎯in the qualities of kindliness and understanding, of learning and personal improvement, and of honor and honest effort. And one great kind of achievement is the kind in which we exceed ourselves.

Neither failure nor success is final so long as we are trying, so long as we have the spirit of improvement and repentance⎯and if we keep moving, keep working, keep improving upon the past, we can hardly help finding the happiness that we so much wish for one another⎯which is what the Lord God wants for all His children⎯as we want it for our own.