Success: How is it achieved?

That is a question I ask myself frequently. How do we, as individuals or as a group, achieve success? How do we know if we have achieved success? In order to better understand these questions lets go back to the beginning of time. I am a Christian and very religious. I believe that what is recorded in the Holy Bible is literal and actually happened. In the beginning, after everything was created, God created Adam and Eve. Then God gave Adam and Eve commandments, one of them being not to eat of the forbidden fruit. Then Satan (the serpent) tempted Adam and Eve to partake of the forbidden fruit. In the words of the Bible, this is what he said, "Ye shall not surely die...your eyes shall be opened...knowing good and evil." (Genesis 3:4-5) Another verse of scripture helps clarify this in these words: "For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad...corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility." (2 Nephi 2:11) I would add also to that, neither failure or success. In other words, in order to achieve success and know that we have achieved success we must have first failed. The old adage comes to mind, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again."

At this point you are probably wondering what this has to do with a political discussion. Let me clarify it for you. If you don't let people (or businesses) fail they will never become stronger and achieve success. People will never learn from their own mistakes or the mistakes of others to be able to finally succeed in what they want to achieve. As the government continues to bailout companies because they are "too big to fail" greater more successful businesses will never have the opportunity to come about. People are more likely to take on more risk then they should if they believe that they are going to be bailed out in the end if something goes wrong. Also, if individuals are bailed out of their mortgages (or anything for that matter) they don't understand what is necessary to achieve success and will rely on someone else, namely the government for everything. If our government continues to do this it will be the start of the welfare state.