There are two ways to ascend: You can step upward, leaving one foot in its place as the other moves ahead. Or you can crouch down and jump.
This is the true meaning of failure: It is the way we have of tearing ourselves out of our past so we can leap into the future.
When a person is always successful, he only moves forward step by step. Which really means that he remains always within the same dimension of reality as before.
When he fails, however, he is then able to look back and say, "This is not where I should be!" Then he tears himself out of his pattern and leaps into a whole new dimension of life.
Anyone who has worked with an addict in recovery has seen this in very practical terms.