Journey is You

Basa: Hebrew for too bad, bummer. 

Yesterday that was the reaction of many Israelis as our dreams of landing a spacecraft on the moon came crashing down. Literally.

I was hyped, oh so hyped! I had watched the original moon landing and this? WOW!!! Watching, excited, my breath held and then...

Something was wrong? What was going on? No. Oh no. Wait, they fixed it! They fixed it? Yes. But then. No. No. No.

The space engineers lost contact with the spacecraft, and it was presumed, due to the speed of its descent and probably other factors that are out of my range of understanding, crashed.

Crashed. 

So did our hopes. Or did they? Read the responses of those who were in that room for the historic event (culled from this article):

Morris Khan, the entrepreneur who backed and organized the mission stated that "I think that the achievement of getting to where we got is really tremendous, I think we can be proud..."

Prime Minister Netanyahu: "If at first you don't succeed, you try again," adding  "We reached the moon but we'd like to land more comfortably. That will be for the next attempt."

While a staffer said: "We are on the moon but not in the way we wanted."

They didn't shy away from the fact that the mission had failed, but then they joked, praised everyone who had given their time and energy for the attempt, while acknowledging the achievements that were reached, wished everyone a "chag kasher v'Semach" (a kosher and happy holiday, referring to Pesach- Passover, which is next Friday) and then sang HaTikva.

HaTikvah. Our national anthem, which means HOPE. I began to weep, but not from sadness, or despair but from the strength that our nation has to go on, to move forward, to try again. 

Failure is simply a way to learn a different approach. Almost all successes have had their failures.

Your ship may crash, but keep your hope alive, and try again.  

Use the formula above in journal when you experience your own crash. Acknowledge the failure, count the successes, wish yourself a good day, and open yourself to hope.