“The question “what if I fail?” is one of the most frequently typed into the Google search engine. So how can we answer it?  The only real answer is that we have to cultivate wisdom, and to do that, we need to make space for quiet study.  That anyway was the view of Aristotle (and Epicurus. Ed. ). Like most of the Greek philosophers he believed that the answer to life was to ” know thyself”; in other words, not to push yourself in the wrong direction, or to chase money or fame.  He said that the life of a merchant was full of worry, and that the glories of a political life were fleeting.  The happy life was the contemplative life.  If you can read books and enjoy doing nothing, you can always be happy………

“Failure is polite. To be imperfect is an act of courtesy to your fellow human beings.  In the same way to be hugely successful is rude because it excites envy and jealousy in others. …It helps to understand that advertisers deliberately appeal to our sense of failure in order to sell stuff”.  (Tom Hodgkinson, Guardian Weekly, 2-8 Oct. 2015).

So don’t be beguiled by the “personalities”, the young and sudden millionaires and all- too- beautiful models and their expensive clothes. It’s all flim- flam, here today, gone tomorrow, drowned (quite frequently) in alcohol and drugs. My mother, a successful and beautiful model in her youth, once told me, “Ignore those glamorous people – at the end of the day there is nothing there.”  Failure, on the other hand, makes you a stronger and wiser person.  We all fail at something.