The Losses Don’t Make Us Failures

I live in the town of Hershey, Pennsylvania, named after its most famous resident and benefactor, Milton S. Hershey, the renowned United States chocolate maker.

Born in 1857, in what was then Derry Church, Pennsylvania, a small farming community in the south central part of the state, Milton was the only surviving child in his family. His beginnings were very humble. Following an incomplete rural school education, he was apprenticed at age 15 with a confectioner in nearby Lancaster, Pennsylvania, after dropping out of school at age 14 and expressing an interest in candy making. His father largely cut himself off from the family by 1867, and young Milton was basically raised by his mother, who instilled in him an appreciation for hard work. By age 18, with $150 he borrowed from his aunt, Milton set up his own candy shop in Philadelphia.

For five difficult years success eluded him there. He closed the shop and headed west, reuniting with his father in Denver, Colorado, where he found work with another confectioner. But the entrepreneur in Hershey wasn't content to work for someone else, and he struck out on his own again—first in Chicago and later in New York City. In both cases, he failed at his efforts. In 1883, he returned to Lancaster and, still convinced he could build a successful candy company, started the Lancaster Caramel Company. And, within a few years, Hershey had a thriving business shipping his caramels all over the country.

At the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, Hershey got an up-close look at the art of chocolate making. He was immediately hooked. While his caramel business boomed, Hershey started the Hershey Chocolate Company. His fascination quickly became focused on milk chocolate, considered a delicacy and largely found in Switzerland. Hershey was determined to find a formula that would allow him to mass-produce and mass-distribute milk chocolate candy.

In 1900, he sold the Lancaster Caramel Company for $1 million, an astronomical amount at that time. Three years later, he began building the largest modern candy-making facility in the world, in Derry Church. It opened in 1905, setting a new direction for Hershey and the candy industry.

Quickly, the Hershey Chocolate Company's success far exceeded that of Milton's previous ventures. As the company grew and Hershey's wealth expanded, so did his vision for creating a model community in his home region. In the town that is now known as Hershey, he built schools, parks, churches, recreational facilities, housing, and a trolley system for his employees.

Milton Hershey married his wife Catherine in 1898. Unable to have children of their own, the Hersheys focused a large portion of their giving on efforts that benefitted children. In 1909, the couple opened the Hershey Industrial School, a facility for orphaned boys. It has since included girls as well and today is known and thrives as the Milton Hershey School. Catherine died unexpectedly in 1918, devastating Milton.

Hershey's philanthropy continued even when the economy struggled and he was nearing the end of his life. In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, Hershey ignited a building mini-boom in his town in order to keep men working. He ordered the construction of a large luxury hotel, a community building, and new offices for the Hershey Company. During World War II, Hershey supported the country's military efforts by supplying soldiers with chocolate bars. 

To those who knew Hershey, his generosity wasn't surprising. Shy and reserved, Hershey had a quiet demeanor that contrasted greatly with that of many of America's other business titans. While he seldom wrote or read, having been forced to leave school early, Hershey was driven to make sure those around him received a solid education. His display of wealth was rather modest, if not downright thrifty. The company and community he'd helped create meant everything to him. He died in Hershey, Pennsylvania, 1945.

His legacy as a businessman and philanthropist continues to this day. The Hershey Chocolate Company has endured as one of the world's great candy makers. The Milton Hershey School now serves about 1,900 students each year, while the M.S. Hershey Foundation, established in 1935, continually funds educational and cultural activities for Hershey residents.

Very little in life is linear. Very little follows a path that takes us in a straight line toward a goal or healing or progress. Milton Hershey’s experience of trial and error, multiple starts and stops, is just one example of how a path to success and an impressive legacy do not usually follow easy and straight lines.

Most of the time, steps we make to move forward are also accompanied by steps that take us backwards. There are detours and turns we didn’t expect or plan for. It’s rare for everything to go just as we hope it will. Not everything we do or every move we make will get us closer toward the goal or desired result we are striving for. Sometimes, our decisions and efforts (or lack of efforts) will take us further away. That is an all-too-common human experience. It’s typical. The path is rarely straight. Instead, it meanders, turns back on itself, and even takes us to places we never dreamed possible or even considered. That can disappoint us. But sometimes, it can also be better than we could have ever imagined!

We can beat ourselves up and also judge others negatively, often, for deviating from the path, digressing in our progress, or going backwards along the way. Not everything we do will, with every step we take, move us ahead in the way we hope or envision. But what really matters is the efforts of trying, as much as we can, to become the better people we want to be. 

Sometimes we’ll mess it up. Sometimes we’ll make it worse. Sometimes we’ll want to quit. But most times, the work of trying, even if we don’t reach all of our goals, will teach us patience, persistence, and plenty of lessons that will ultimately make us stronger, wiser, and better. 

We can learn much from both our triumphs and our losses. The losses don’t make us failures. They don’t make us less worthy. They don’t make us less good. They simply make us human.

It also works that way with our listening. If listening was easy, Someone To Tell It To wouldn’t be needed. Everyone would listen intentionally and listen well. There would be no need for our listening, listening training and listening educational work. 

But listening isn’t easy. Listening is hard. Listening takes patience, resolve, discipline, and a belief that everyone is worthy of being heard, even if you don’t agree with them. Without those essential qualities undergirding our listening, we do not listen as well as we could. If it was easy, we’d all do it better. It takes effort, trial and error, and practice. With nearly everything else that matters in life, we won’t always get it perfectly right. But when we try, and with experience, we can do well and we can do it better.

It takes having grace with ourselves and with others in all aspects of our lives. Whether it’s trying to be a better listener or better at anything else, none of us will do any of it perfectly. There will be mistakes along the way and times when we come up short. But to remember that it takes a lifetime for everything worthy of being done to be done well. We will always need to be growing and improving at doing the things that really matter. 

But it surely is worth the effort when we do.

Photo by Tetiana Bykovets on Unsplash