Denial

Tonight, I worked with three students who are going on to compete in a city/region wide English contest. 

Their challenge: Speak for 3 minutes about a Word that has Changed the World.

One of my students chose the word Denial.  She wrote that through people denying us and even self denial great things have come (Steve Jobs being fired from Apple etc).  However, the translation of denial from Chinese to English missed some connotation causing the native English speakers to question her usage of the word.

We spent two hours tossing around ideas for a new word...criticism, overcoming denial, failure, etc etc.  There was no word, no English word at least, that would capture her idea.  However, the word denial in its base form worked...it just had connotation and grammatical baggage that made it unacceptable.  So we talked, debated, and thought and thought and thought.

Finally, I simply said that we needed to acknowledge the word's failure and point out the weakness before the judges do.  By acknowledging the weakness, admitting the failure, we then became able to use the word...without its baggage.

And isn't that true in life?  When we have a weakness or a shortcoming, we need to acknowledge the weakness and admit the failure.  We can then take the good that is there and move forward...working with what we have but also drawing from our strengths.

We need to stop denying that we have shortcomings...rather, we need to face them, own them, and well...Just Do It.