More Than Your Worst Moment
by Stephen Doherty
October 4th, 2026
“No man is more unhappy than he who never faces adversity.
For he is not permitted to prove himself.” — Marcus Aurelius
Throughout history, mankind has never been shy about creating new and innovative ways to tear down his fellow man. I don’t think I need to recount the shortcomings of our shared humanity and the accompanying atrocities, abuses, and societal and cultural dismissiveness inflicted too often upon too many. History provides us with countless examples—as does our collective experience.
In recent times, the one that has infuriated me most, for reasons I think all of us can understand and appreciate, is the practice of attempting to define someone’s life and value by their worst moments. Social media has taken the “art” of muckraking and turned it into a bloodsport of personal destruction, where attempts to destroy lives and reputations based on some obscure utterance or act that occurred eons ago have become a cultural norm. Not only has this practice increasingly obliterated otherwise exemplary lives—it violates one of the most sacred human tenets: redemption.
In the movie The Natural, Glenn Close tells a dejected Robert Redford, who is haunted by his past mistakes and poor decisions, “I believe we have two lives. The life we learn with, and the life we live after that.”
Boom!
There are two realities in all of our lives. One, we will make bad decisions and sometimes suffer terrible consequences as a result. Two, those mistakes can provide the foundational concrete for who and what we eventually become. Absent a strong foundation, no building will remain standing for long. We’re no different. Adversity tests us. Failure humbles us. Consequences teach us. And sometimes the worst moments of our lives become the very things upon which we build the best parts of ourselves.
To my contrarian friends, I will concede an exception to this theorem: pure and unadulterated evil, unworthy of redemption or forgiveness. And redemption isn’t the same thing as escaping accountability. Consequences matter. Victims matter. Some actions are enormously more serious than others. But accountability asks, “What did you do, and what must you do about it?” Permanent condemnation asks, “What you did is what you are—and what you will always be.” Those are very different propositions.
For the vast majority of us, it is not our worst moments that define us—it is our response to those moments. Did we learn? Did we change? Did we become more compassionate, thoughtful, humble, or wise? Our failures are not necessarily anathema to our character. Sometimes they help build it.
Brené Brown, in her terrific book Daring Greatly, goes a step further and explores the pain and suffering born of refusing to embrace the worst of who we’ve been and what we’ve done—allowing shame to weigh too heavily upon the already difficult task of growing and developing. My favorite quote from her book is: “When we deny our stories, they define us. When we own our stories, we get to write a brave new ending.”
Experiencing adversity and defeat, then, is only part of the equation. Owning it is the key to leveraging it—not the other way around.
Maybe that is the ultimate measure of a life—not whether we managed to avoid falling, failing, hurting someone, being hurt, or occasionally becoming someone we aren’t particularly proud of. Few of us will escape those moments. The measure is what we build from them. Did we own them? Did we make amends where we could? Did we learn, change, grow, and become better because of them?
Our worst moments may always be part of our story, but they need never become its title. They can instead become the foundational concrete upon which everything stronger, wiser, kinder, and more courageous is built. We are more than the worst thing we’ve ever done. We are what we choose to become after it.
“Failure is a lesson learned. Success is a lesson applied.”
