You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.
I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.
Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places.
What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.