I’m A Failure
So, the other day I slipped on the ice and ate some sidewalk. I walked into a local theater with a bloody face I didn't know was bloody and had my friend say “hey man, you got shit on your face. Oh, wait, that’s actually blood. Now I feel bad.”
I had physical evidence of my failure to walk safely on the ice. Failure doesn’t always leave blood running down your face, but it definitely does have a real effect.
It’s no coincidence that I’ve been thinking about failure for more than a few days now. I had my stand-up set on the last Everything Will Be Okay comedy show videotaped and it didn’t go as well as I wanted it to. In fact, I felt near the end of my set that I had kind of failed. I’d failed to put the best version of part of my act on video.
I've had a lot of personal and professional failures in the past. Failure is never an easy thing to grasp. It can hit every area of your life, too. A failed relationship can leave both parties hurting and give them a wavering confidence about their own lovability. Going out of business can feel like a literal death to the employees of any company. Even not being able to skip a rock across a quiet pond in the summertime can feel like a failure.
A lot of writing that I found online about failure was mostly geared towards business or it was a personal essay where someone had horrible things happen to them and they overcame those events. I didn’t read anything where a dude couldn’t open a package of cashews so he didn’t get to eat cashews. Tiny failures are failures, too. They can have less of an effect, but they still do something to you.
“Failure is always the best way to learn,
Retracing your steps until you know,
Have no fear your wounds will heal.” — The Kings of Convenience
The power of failure, I think, is what people assign to it. It’s about how much you let it control how you think about yourself or your future. It can be a great learning opportunity as cliche as that sounds. You learn what sucks and what doesn't suck. Failure can also give you a clean, new slate in which to use to create something better.
Failure doesn't even have to be a bad thing. Some failures are so huge that they become successes in their own right. Whether it be a cult classic or most canceled television shows that had such rabid fans that they were either brought back or the people from those shows still became successful. A nice failure can sometimes lead to unforeseen, great success.
I see failure as a part of a constant evolution. Not to get too cosmic, but failure is part of a constant rebirth that takes place in every moment for every living thing in the universe. That’s not too cosmic. We all want to be the best versions of ourselves no matter how many self-deprecating shots we take.
“Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.” — George Eliot
Failure does hurt a bit, that’s for damn sure. It can hurt your feelings. And then you write a blog post about it. Then, readers who you failed being relatable to can hurt your feelings. It does go away, though.
Ultimately, you press on. Because you can’t not do the thing that you do and are passionate about. Besides, constant success can actually be boring. There’s something exciting about seeing something carefully constructed for success go down in flames.
All I’m saying is I’m a failure.
