The Majesty of Calmness

The obstacle is the way

Echoes

Jordan calls failure “the revelation of a way, a path hitherto unknown to us” and has stumbling-blocks become “new stepping-stones”. He credits no named thinker.

1. c. 170 to 180 CE

   “for the mind converts and changes every hindrance to its activity into an aid; and so that which is a hindrance is made a furtherance to an act; and that which is an obstacle on the road helps us on this road.”

   Marcus Aurelius, Meditations. Earliest we can find, about 1,720 years earlier.

2. 1898

   “Failure is one of God’s educators. It is experience leading man to higher things; it is the revelation of a way, a path hitherto unknown to us.”