Learning to Fail - Wile E Coyote, Super Genius

As a kid, my favorite thing to do on Saturday morning was to wake up - 6-ish, get a huge bowl of cereal, then sit in front of the TV and watch cartoons until about noon. I loved Looney Tunes; Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, and I most of all... Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius - a creation of the late, great Chuck Jones.  The coyote was always trying to capture that elusive road runner. I loved that he was not just a genius, he was a SUPER genius and wildly clever, at least he tried to be. He would order boxes from ACME and put together elaborate systems to capture the road runner - which never worked. Ever. Most of the time they back fired so badly that he would get hurdled off a cliff or catapulted into a wall.


The coyote failed over and over and over but he never gave up. He never allowed his failures to dampen his determination. I loved that about him - even at age 7.  But - you may be thinking - the coyote never got the road runner! That's the interesting thing about success and failure.You know what they say - success always occurs in private, and failure in full view. So I like to think somewhere out there... the coyote won.