On this date, 29 years ago (January 28, 1983), the Challenger space shuttle exploded 73 seconds into flight, killing all seven crew members. This space mission was to include Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher in space.
According to Wikipedia, one study reported that 85 percent of Americans heard the news within an hour of the accident. Considering Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t even born yet, the speed of the report without social media is quite remarkable.
What’s even more remarkable is that we kept going. It would have been easy to stop and give up. Many would have been sympathetic and understood if we took that path. But, despite a tragedy that involved the loss of human life, we learned from our failures, tried again, and eventually were successful at sending men to the moon again.
Our personal struggles rarely come close to a life and death situation. But persevering and picking ourselves off the mat over and over again in the face of failure is a great lesson to learn.