You have to go through the falling down in order to learn to walk. It helps to know that you can survive it. That’s an education in itself.

Burnett frames failure as a necessary stage of growth rather than a verdict on one’s ability. The image of learning to walk suggests that stumbling is built into any process of mastery: progress comes through repeated attempts, missteps, and adjustment. The second sentence shifts from skill-building to resilience—what matters is discovering, through experience, that a fall is survivable. That knowledge reduces fear and makes future risks possible. Calling it “an education in itself” elevates endurance and recovery to a form of learning as important as technical competence, implying that character is trained not only by success but by the capacity to continue after setbacks.