The Plains, the Mountains and San Diego

 What's the opposite of success? 

Most people would say the opposite of success is failure, but consider this. Success isn't possible without failure as they are two sides of the same coin; book ends if you will, so even though success may be on the opposite end of the failure spectrum it isn't the opposite of the experience of success. The real opposite of true success is mediocrity.

Webster defines mediocrity:

"of only moderate quality; not very good"

Mediocrity is doing just enough to get by; adequate but nothing more. It's just enough to pay the bills and keep gas in the car and not much else.

South Dakota

I drove through South Dakota a long time ago and it was the flattest place I'd ever seen. I drove from one end of the state to the other and the only thing higher than the land around me was my car. I felt like if I stood on the eastern border of the state, I could look west and see the whole state, all the way to the western border, without interruption. 

Montana

But then, after driving for a few hours, I ended up in Montana which is the opposite of South Dakota with gigantic mountains that seemed to never end. The views were indescribable. I felt like I wouldn't have appreciated the magnificence of the mountains if I had not first been through the featureless plains of S. Dakota. 

Someone once said, a person can never know how beautiful it is on the mountain top unless they've been in the deepest valley. If there were no valleys, there would be no mountains. If there was no bad, there would be no good. If there were no failure, there would be no success. 

Go Ahead and Vomit

One more story. As a young recruit in San Diego, our drill instructors had us understand in their own colorful manners, that during the brutal training we were undergoing, we were going to pass out from exhaustion, vomit from the heat, pull muscles, get bruised, bloodied and blistered. 

"So what?", they said. "When you get through vomiting or when you regain consciousness, just pick up where you left off and finish." 

You can't have success without failure even if it means vomiting your guts out.