Failure
What defines success? The absence of failure?
Dealing with doubt and uncertainty is all part of trying to start or do something. No one wants to fail publicly.
What is worse is not to try.
There are some more recent examples of spectacular failure which resulted in the loss of billions of dollars, which for most of us is a figure that is difficult to comprehend. During the early months of the global financial crisis the collapse of many companies saw billions of dollars of value ‘wiped off’ the stock exchange. Lehman Brothers is seen as a scapegoat, but terms like ‘toxic debt’ were frequently used to describe the situation many companies faced. Some of those companies no longer exist.
Is there a correlation between the failure of the world’s financial and banking system which led to the global financial crisis, and the situation confronted in less glamourous places across the world where the conditions of extreme poverty are inescapable and oppressive? I contend that there is a wider spiritual failure cultivated from seeds of greed that contributes to both.
Throughout the 10 City Bridge Run I am and will be confronted by my own real sense of failure in a different sense.
The core focus on the 10 City Bridge Run is the publication of a book to be presented as a ‘pictorial petition’ to the G20 Summit leadership in November. With a working title of “Above the Line”, the book will feature 24,000 photographs of people who are posing to create a bridge using themselves and another person or people. We are encouraging people to be as creative as they would like in achieving this- our best response so far is from a village chief in PNG lining up his 200 elders to form a massively long human bridge.
The metaphor of a bridge communicates our connectedness, among other things. This is important. Help us raise this issue to the G20 Summit so that the issue of aid is not sidelined by a focus on addressing structural reform to the global banking system.
The run, the logistics, the photographs, the book…surely you might well be shaking your head in disbelief and muttering that while it sounds intriguing, it also would appear impossible.
Is the seemingly impossible possible? is the tag line to this event, and although inherently problematic (and truthfully is far from ‘a walk in the park’), it is achievable which I intend to demonstrate before the G20 Summit commences.
Put into perspective, my sense of failure is manageable and the consequences are not fatal. Sadly, this is not true for a child born in a community experiencing extreme poverty. What can we do about this? I don’t have the answers, but I am going to try to create a shift through along with other people through the 10 City Bridge Run.
Join us. Please sponsor the book and build a bridge into the G20 Summit.
Building Bridges 