The real sting here isn't about failure itself—it's about the shame of untested potential. Jordan draws a sharp line between stumbling and never stepping forward, and that distinction matters because society tends to forgive the first while quietly judging the second. A musician who bombs an audition has something failure cannot touch; someone who never auditioned has only the comfortable fiction of what they *might* have done. The distinction explains why so many of us feel more regret about roads not taken than wrong turns we actually made.