Winston Churchill said, “It is mountaintops that inspire leaders, but valleys that mature them.” I write to you from the perspective of a former Student Association candidate who lost his race.
    On Feb. 12 of last spring, I found that I would not be the vice president of the SA at Mississippi State University. With one announcement by the elections commissioner, the previous four months of my life seemed utterly wasted. I poured months of my life into something and asked a core team of others to do the same. My selfless friends on the campaign team put their lives on hold to do a crucial, yet thankless job. Time was spent painting signs, preparing speeches, and election day strategies were crafted only to discover that we had not met our goal. Losing in front of more than 20,000 people is a humbling thing.
    The most crucial item on the agenda following a major event in life is a conscious decision on how to respond. We invest far more time in our reactions to the experiences we endure than the actual incidents themselves.
   After election day, I had to go back to the drawing board. I was surprised by what I found. Looking back over the last year, I have decided that losing that election was the best thing that has happened to me during my tenure at MSU. I now firmly believe that failure, in fact, can be a good thing. Had I not lost that election, I would not have reevaluated my priorities and delved into some much-needed fault finding in my habits and every day decision making.
  Theodore Roosevelt understood opportunity and failure, and he described it best in his speech “Citizenship in a Republic” when he detailed what it means to be “the man (or woman) in the arena.”
    He said, “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena … who spends himself in a worthy cause … and if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
   Apathy and lethargy plague the millennial generation.  Combating this apathy with some sort of constructive outlet, whether civic, academic, physical or spiritual — anything with an element of intrinsic good that leads to our development as individuals — is absolutely paramount. We need somewhere to invest our most precious resource: our time. We should commit to rid ourselves of the habitual, aimless movement through our days, only moving from one event to the next with no goals, for this is exhausting and a sure way to simply go through the motions.  
  C.S. Lewis wrote, “It would seem pretty clear that paddling near the shore is of little consequence.”
    Taking a leap of faith on something is a liberating concept. Who cares if you come up short from time to time? The beauty of failure is that it inherently leads to new opportunity. It allows us another chance to achieve.  We are awarded an opportunity to respond, to show what we are really made of and find out what our true character is. Failure is a time to develop and grow. Our future selves are forged in the decisions we make in response to adversity.
   To this year’s candidates who find themselves in the same position as I did one year ago, let me offer you my stance: don’t let this loss define you in a negative way. I assure you, it is not as bad as it seems. Doors will open where you absolutely did not expect to see opportunity. You will meet people that you would not have known existed who will serve as integral parts to your growth and development as a person. The credit belongs to you for spending yourself in a worthy cause, no matter the outcome.  Seek comfort in the fact that even in this temporary moment of shortcoming, you can always know that your place will never be among those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.