HAVE YOU EVER FAILED? BE HONEST

Now you know that this is going to be deep stuff.  I saw the cartoon and couldn't help but listen to my brain whirling around looking for a wise-crack about "feel" versus "sure" and "failure."  My brain didn't deliver one to my satisfaction, so you have to be satisfied with what I got.  Actually, I got a lesson in personal failure the other day.  It is not a very good feeling, but it is an honest one.  It reminded me of some of the other times when I have come to the point of realizing that I had reached the limit of my talent in one field or another.  One of the things I was not very good at, and in fact, lousy at, was hand to hand combat...you know, fist fighting.  It took me a while before I realized that many of the people whom I strongly disliked could lay me out in lavender before I got the second jab going.  Yep, I took some pretty good shellackings.  The other area of failure for me is mathematics.  I can't fault myself for not trying, but I suppose if I reflect on it long enough and deep enough, I might wonder about the quality of the effort.  "Suppose" all I want, that's all I'm going to do.  I took my last and best shot at math when I was 38 and I got a "C".   That night I went out and bought an ounce of the best "Sensimilla", joined my friends and came to the conclusion that this was the crowning glory of my mathematics career.  I've been a failure at math all my life.  You can tell that I have accepted it because I have learned to laugh at it.  It was harder for me to accept that I was not as good as I thought in baseball.  I accepted it at about 19 years of age, but I still can replay, pitch by pitch, play by play, some of the games in which I proved to the world and to myself that I had better find something else to do with my life.  It was not so hard to realize that I would never amount to much in sports that require indirect contact with the ball, the bird or the puck.  If I have to use a paddle, a racquet or a stick, I am a failure.  I am also a failure at basketball and volleyball. Period.  
Cards?  Cards, you ask?  I am a good pinochle player, a slick cribbage guy, a so-so bridge partner and a terrible black-jack table pretender.  
Puzzles?  Good interlocking picture puzzle assembler, slightly better than average crossword puzzle doodler (Thursday's New York Times level).
There is one area of life in which I can say without equivocation that I am BAD at:  Accounting.  Even the simplest, easiest repetitive task is going to turn to dust in my hands.  I know that is is because I am so distracted when it comes to details.  Especially that kind of detail.  Maybe even any detail.  I wonder how many of this blog's posts are 100% error free.  More than likely, none.  Why?  It is beyond me.  I reread them all at least three times before pressing the button to publish and at least once after publishing.  About 9 of 10 times I have to recall it and make a least one correction before announcing it to the community.  There are some things that I do well, but, as you can easily see, there are also some that I don't do well at all.
The one thing that I do well, is to be able to be honest with myself and with others.  I came to know that self directed honesty is the road to happiness here on earth quite a while ago.  I have come to know who I am and that tells me what I can or cannot do.  That doesn't mean that I don't participate in some activities that are outside my area of weakness, but I don't take myself seriously while doing them.  That's OK in games.  It's not OK in activities that should be serious.  It's difficult for me to be serious when I am in a weakness zone.  This attitude becomes problematic when serious life situations demand breaking out of the comfort zone and forcing my "square peg" into a less than square hole.  I suppose we all have to do this sometimes, but we all hate to be something that is not "me."  
I am happy to tell you that since I have had the joy of failing at something and living with the consequences for about a week now, it becomes more and more satisfying to write to you like I do.  I also have other things that I now have time to do that I excel at.   I wonder where it is all going to lead me.  Isn't that a question that we all have?  May the answers all bring peace, joy and happiness.