What’s worse than failure?

When our bellies are full, the bills are paid, the breeze gently billows our sail, the sky above is a brilliant baby-blanket blue mirrored in the water below, then life is good.

But what if it’s not?

There’s a rooster that lives across the street. I think its internal clock is set to announce the rising of the sun – which won’t occur for another two hours - for 3 A.M.

Fortunately, for me, I’m hard of hearing so I don’t know if the rooster crows or not.

There was a man named Peter who had major problems but not hearing the rooster was not one of them.

He failed as greatly, certainly in his own eyes, as any man could fail. It happened. His chewed-up, eraser-wasted, stub-of-a-pencil life would be forever on display for all to read.

And yet, ironically, as surely as the sun rises - which event is often believed to be announced by a rooster - that experience became the tipping, and the turning, point of who he was to become.

What’s worse than refusing to admit that we’re wrong – and everybody is now and again - or disavowing responsibility for having failed, is not learning from the whole experience.

But then humble reflection isn’t going to happen anyway if we don’t first take an honest look in the mirror.

In her opinion piece entitled, “Character still matters in politics,” Rose Wilson writes that she’s not choosing one of the party candidates for president. Wilson wants “a president who has lived the American experience, who has faced tough times and risen above them. Above all, we need a president who is intelligent and compassionate.”

My choice? I want a self-aknowledged failure.

For any position of leadership.

Timothy R. Clark, who earned a doctorate from Oxford University and is the best-selling author of “Epic Change” and “The Leadership Test,” expounded on the benefits of facing our failures in his article entitled “Everyone should write a resume of failure.”

“Success is traceable to failure. Often our failures become the most formative and defining experiences of our lives.” It’s what makes you, you, according to Clark.

“Failure is not a tragedy. Not learning from failure is a tragedy. Quitting is a tragedy.”

The benefits of being “honest with ourselves” and others? “We square up to our strengths and weaknesses.”

Plumbing the depths of failure, wringing every dripping ounce of the perspiration it admittedly takes from the introspection with regards our faults, is to “become more real, more genuine and less motivated to impress people by showcasing only our successes.”

What’s worse than failure is the failure to have learned from failure.