Let's not make another cult out of failure
I disagree with it, and rather than point to my own life to start this post from Joe Kraus of Google Venture explains my perspective better than I ever could: http://joekraus.com/the-lies-we-tell-ourselves.
TL;DR Let's not make a cult of failure for its own sake. The amazing part of this story is not the colossal fuck-up, but the fact that he succeeded once, make a massive mistake that tore down all his work, didn't get in his own way and give up, and then went on to succeed again. Had he not succeeded again, that initial mistake would have defined his entire life. That failure would have been the thing that he believed he was, not the success that he later became.
I had a mentor of mine suggest to me me over an early morning breakfast, "Austin, at some point you may ask yourself if it's possible to stop 'failing in exchange for knowledge,' and actually succeed while simultaneously enjoying your work and learning twice as much as when you fail."
That was a defining moment in my life and those words have rippled to where I sit now two years later. Until that moment, I thought that the only path to knowledge was called "failure." I simply think that's a lie we tell ourselves now. We learn more from success than we ever do from failure, and we shouldn't be in denial about that.
I'm still on the journey, but with a lot of progress behind me. I tell the story of my mentor not to point to position myself as the "model for success," but merely to share my own journey learning the difference in my own psychology between failing and succeeding. One is life-affirming, and I choose that one.
Coming full-circle, I don't intend to take away from the Pando article. It's an incredible story of resilience, and the marine deserves credit and respect. It's just not a story of failure.