One day, while I was waiting for my father, I saw a little boy, around two years old, running freely on the grass as his mother watched from a short distance. The boy had a big smile on his face as if he had just been set free from some sort of prison (监狱). The boy would then fall to the grass, get up, without looking back at his mother, run as fast as he could, again, still with a smile on his face, as if nothing had happened.
At that moment, I thought to myself, "Why aren't most adults this way?" Most adults, when they fall down, make a big deal out of it and don't even make a second attempt. They would be so embarrassed that they would not try again if someone saw them fall. Or, because they fall, they would find a good excuse for themselves that they're not fit for it. They would end up being too afraid to attempt again for fear of failure (失败).
However, with kids, when they fall down, they don't consider their falling down as a failure, instead, they treat it as a learning experience. They try again and again until they succeed. The answer must be that they have not connected "falling down" with the word "failure". What's more, they probably think to themselves that it's quite okay to fall down and that it's not wrong to do so. In other words, they allow themselves to make mistakes, so they remain energetic.
I was deeply impressed by the boy's persistence (坚持不懈) and the manner in which he did.
