Edward Steichen, one of the world’s most renowned photographers, almost gave up on the day he shot his first pictures. At the age of sixteen he bought a camera and took fifty photos. Only one turned out – a portrait of his sister at the piano. Edward’s father thought that was a poor showing. But his mother insisted that the photograph was so beautiful that it more than compensated for forty nine failures. Her encouragement caused him to stick with his new hobby and eventually gave the world one of its greatest photographers. But it had been a close call. What tipped the scales? It was the vision to spot one thing good in the midst of failure.
That is one of the great lessons of life because the supreme value in life is not in how much success we have achieved but in how hard we have tried.