The Joys and Lessons of Failed Work

Listening to a talk from the San Francicso Zen Center last night on failure I contemplated all my own failures and how much space and opportunity was in them.

I could not be more thankful for the failing and the realization they provide: that I can relax into comfortable happy Lucky Idiot-hood and smile.

Failure in good company:


The Joys and Lessons of Failed Work by Wendell Berry

I go by a field where once
I cultivated a few poor crops.
It is now covered with young trees,
for the forest that belongs here
has come back and reclaimed its own.
And I think of all the effort
I have wasted and all the time,
and of how much joy I took
in that failed work and how much
it taught me. For in so failing
I learned something of my place,
something of myself, and now
I welcome back the trees.