A dear friend telephoned me last night, sobbing, and said, “Am I a failure?”
“Well luv,” I thought. “Let’s see. Your business is in trouble. Your sweetie has ended your relationship. Your car is in the shop, your house is in foreclosure-land, and your cat has started pissing your walls. I’d say that your life kinda sucks.”
And now that I look up “failure” in the dictionary, yep, you are a failure, in the “lack of success” and “the action or state of not functioning” parts of the definition.
But now that we’ve answered the question and said, yes, you are a failure, it’s time to move on to the important question: Have you let yourself or someone else down for lack of attention, love, or effort?
‘Cause here’s the deal luv, failure, just is. It might hurt like hell. It might make your head and heart spin out of control. It might expose your weak spots to the entire world (or seemingly, the entire world). But failure is what happens when we actually live.
Little bitty failures. Big tumultuous failures. Screaming match failures. I’ve-never-cried-so-hard-in-my-life failures. I’ll-never-get-this-money-paid-back failures.
I think we should all wear badges displaying the types and degrees of failure we’ve manifest–so we can see we are not alone in our struggles and stumbles.
But, back to the important question: Have you let yourself or someone else down for lack of attention, love, or effort?
Because this is the only part that matters. Are you happy? Are you, by your own standards, disappointed with yourself? Have you, by your own standards, disappointed someone who is important to you?
Go deep and examine this. Not with self-flagellation, but with love and the belief that you will rise out of this, flourishing.
It’s time to hold hands with your failure, and focus on the bits that actually matter when it’s time to carve your tombstone.
Love, joy, happiness–that you’ve brought into your life, and that you have shared with others.
So baby, go and make what amends you can make, brush the dust off your knees, and stand up and step forward into the new life that awaits you.
photo by Tracy Olson under Creative Commons license
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
There is only one thing worse than failure. That would be never daring to push beyond doubts or past hurts. Never taking the risk for life to be larger, fuller, richer and thicker than the deepest chocolate. We all fall down. We all break. Winter is unavoidable.
beautiful.
And well understood by you ….and me.
In the winter quiet, I have been reviewing this last year’s failures and boo-boos. Then, since the snow has trapped my car in, and I’ve had no-where to go for almost a couple of weeks, I reviewed a few more years of failures, and you know what?
They all became a blur. I had a hard time distinguishing when what failure happened. Which prompts me to say:
The what and the when did not matter so much as the CHANGE. Did I change anything? Did I take a good look at what it is I keep on repeating over and over again and change any thing at all? Might not help prevent failures of any kind, but may alleviate the pain of said failures.
I love the ultimate question you asked: ” Have you let yourself or someone else down for lack of attention, love, or effort?” Good one. In my review of past failures, I had to answer: “yup. Oh yes.”
On to the rest of my life and its successful adventure. Cheering you on in yours, leila.
All well said and on point. It’s also important to say that it’s easier to say than to do.
DrD
Oh yes Dennis. True; like so many bits of life, it is easier to say than to do. Gets easier to do, with experience. I think that’s why I wish we c/would all display our failures, b/c that would make “it” easier to do, knowing we are not alone.