Used with Permission of Currents Magazine July 1, 2026

| By Mickey Dunaway |

Do you worry?

Of course you do. We all do—and probably more than we should.

As I write this column, I find myself worrying whether I will finish it on time and whether it will make sense to you, the reader. Those concerns are familiar to anyone who has ever faced a deadline, launched a project, started a new job, or stepped into unfamiliar territory.

Most worries can be traced to one of three questions:

Am I? Was I? Or Will I be successful—Successful at a goal, a project, a relationship, a challenge, or a dream.

Recently, I came across the simple diagram below that perfectly illustrates the way most of us think about success. On one side is a straight arrow moving steadily upward. On the other is a tangled scribble that eventually reaches the same destination and is really how we achieve success.

That diagram appeared in a fly-fishing blog by Jo Tango ((https://www.fullingmill.com), who described a long-awaited trip to Patagonia, South America, in search of trophy trout. Like many bucket-list adventures, the trip carried high expectations. He invested time, money, and anticipation into the experience and wore an Oura health-monitoring ring throughout the journey.

The fishing, however, did not unfold as planned.

The trophy trout he envisioned largely failed to materialize, and he returned home feeling that the trip had fallen short of expectations. Yet when he reviewed the data collected by his health device, he discovered something surprising. During this supposedly unsuccessful trip, his sleep improved, his stress levels declined, and several indicators of his physical well-being were better than they were during his normal work routine.

What looked like failure on the surface had produced meaningful benefits beneath it.

That realization contains an important lesson. Getting what we want is not always the same thing as getting what we need. Often, the greatest rewards arrive through routes we never anticipated.

As parents, grandparents, teachers, leaders, and friends, we sometimes fall into the trap of presenting success as a straight line. Work hard, do the right things, and everything will fall neatly into place.

Life rarely works that way.

For twelve years as a high school principal, I spent a great deal of time thinking about what young people needed to navigate an increasingly complicated world. I eventually concluded that certain values matter regardless of age, occupation, or circumstance: honesty, love, truth, consistency, thoughtfulness, goodness, and integrity.

However, those values do not guarantee an easy life.

In fact, they often make life more challenging because they require difficult choices. They demand perseverance when shortcuts seem attractive. They require us to stand firm when standing firm is uncomfortable and to embrace change when change is necessary.

Neither path is easy.

As the saying goes, “Nobody likes change except a wet baby.”

Yet growth almost always requires some measure of discomfort.

Inspiration sometimes arrives from unexpected places. One of my favorite observations came from the late Kris Kristofferson, who wrote, “I’d rather be sorry for something I did than for something I didn’t do.”

There is wisdom in those words.

Before becoming a successful songwriter and entertainer, Kristofferson worked jobs far removed from the spotlight. His life reminds us that worthwhile achievements often emerge from uncertain beginnings. Progress requires risk, and the absence of risk often produces its own regrets.

Lately, my wife Sandy and I have been exploring North Carolina’s mountain streams in pursuit of trout. Before we began, I studied books, researched techniques, purchased equipment, and filled notebooks with information. Preparation helped, but it did not eliminate uncertainty.

Every new stream presents questions.

Will the water be too low? Too warm? Will someone already be fishing the spots we planned to visit? Did we bring the right flies? Are we wasting our time?

The doubts arrive quickly.

If we’re not careful, they can distract us from the experience itself—from the beauty of the mountains, the sound of moving water, and the privilege of standing in a landscape shaped over hundreds of millions of years.

The Appalachian Mountains are among Earth’s oldest mountain ranges. Unlike the youthful Himalayas, which continue to rise, the Appalachians have been sculpted by time. Their beauty comes not from towering height but from endurance, character, and age.

There is a lesson there, too.

The most meaningful successes in life are rarely dramatic. They are built gradually through persistence, patience, and faithfulness to our values. Looking back, the path often resembles that tangled ball of spaghetti more than the clean, straight arrow we imagined at the beginning.

But that does not mean we are lost.

When our values are sound and our lives are grounded in integrity, the twists and turns often become part of the success itself.

Success is not always found in catching the fish, reaching the destination, or achieving the goal exactly as planned.

Sometimes success is found in who we become along the way.

__________

“Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
— Winston Churchill

“Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
— Winston Churchill