As far as I’m concerned, life is made up of long periods of tedious waiting linked by very brief moments of transition. Just fleeting flashes of reality give way to the next stretch of long wait and so on until the last breath. The simplicity of the facts in those minimalist chapters is deceptive because you get the false impression of having some kind of control over what ultimately happens. What I’m saying has happened to me ten or twelve times in my entire life. Of all, the last one has perhaps been the most transcendental, or rather, the most relevant, taking into account free will.
On other occasions I was faced with an unexpected event or defending myself against some type of attack, not necessarily physical. I could say that this time I am 100% responsible for the adventure from start to finish. And the adventure was the competition for the innovation and technology awards that the train manufacturer Talgo organizes annually. I did it because I was convinced that Onice is a great computer program. Three months after submitting it to the contest, they notified me that it had been selected among more than sixty candidate projects nationwide and that I had a 33.3333% chance of being the winner. As you can imagine, I still couldn’t trust myself nor could I see myself winning without knowing the merits of the other two finalists. I just had a hunch that Onice was good enough to pull it off…
And the act began.
From minute 46 you can see the videos of the three candidates. At that moment, after taking note of each project I thought “I’m going to win!”
While I thought about it, my heart beat very hard; Much louder than it has ever beaten. From that moment on I lost track of time, I could foresee every movement of every person present in that immense room. Everything that was happening seemed to be taken from a recording I had already seen; I don’t know when, but I had seen it before. The heart did not stop beating strongly. Then, almost without pausing, the presenter said: “And the innovation award goes to…”
Just a few milliseconds was the period that took me from the moment I had imagined and that, surely, would have marked a turning point in my life, to another totally opposite reality… An adverse reality. I found it very difficult to accept the verdict of the evaluating panel after having seen the three presentations; after checking that everyone seemed to like Onice. Please; understand what I mean; I accepted that decision immediately and I have no reason to think they were wrong. They say adversity is the forge of survivors and I guess I’m a survivor. I made, perhaps, the mistake of believing that the time had finally come to receive the reward for the effort of all this time. What I wanted to talk about now is the record time it took me to assimilate that that moment had not yet arrived, that surely the winning project was superior to mine, that we should not underestimate others and that it is not medically good for the heart It beats so hard.
My friends, my colleagues, my relatives, all my people say the same thing: It is very worthwhile to be a finalist under these conditions. I should be happy with what I’ve achieved. I appreciate the messages of support and I’m sure they mean it with the best intentions, but Onice deserved to win. It is great software, it is designed to make the life of the train driver easier and safer. Unlike the other projects, Onice is a real product. If Onice is a great product and deserved to win, but didn’t, what went wrong here?
I don’t have a single answer to that question. Obviously I have not been able to communicate what that program does, or perhaps I have not known how to do it correctly. Social relationships may also have failed. A group of people with busy schedules cannot be expected to bother studying each of the seventy candidate projects. I couldn’t do it. If I had known the members of the tribunal I would have taken the opportunity to fill in the gaps in the documentation with close examples or resolve doubts. The people who won this year’s award knew everyone and got along easily with them. Assuming that the winner of the contest did not deserve the prize, the person who chose him cannot be blamed for his lack of telepathy. In fact, the act itself is irrelevant. It must be seen as a key moment that I faced, in which I did not rise to the occasion.
Life goes on and work is there. It is time to draw conclusions, assume the consequences and prepare to face future challenges. In this I am not alone. Defeat is a necessary travel companion for entrepreneurs. Thomas Alva Edison knew this well. Although we remember him as a successful man, failure was the chisel that sculpted his talent. I stay with his phrases…
- Every person must decide once in their life if they set out to succeed, risking everything, or if they sit back and watch the winners pass by.
- Many defeats occur to people who did not realize how close to success they came.
- People are not remembered for the number of times they fail, but for the number of times they succeed.
And the best one forever: I didn’t fail, I just discovered 999 ways not to make a light bulb.
