The one with failure

I always find myself impressed with the strength and beauty of the human spirit. Day in and day out we are faced with monumental tasks that may or not be possible to complete yet as a species humans do not back down. There is something about the human spirit that powers us to keep going no matter what. Now don't get me wrong, I am not talking about performing brain surgery or saving the world. However if a task means enough to somebody then it might as well be brain surgery. For example if the difference between paying rent on time and being homeless is fetching somebody's dry cleaning on time then getting that dry cleaning will be the single most important thing that they have done in their life. And you better believe that no matter what obstacles come between me and getting the job done, there will be no point during the day when I will think about quitting. Isn't that strange?

I have always wondered why it is that we do this. If something seems too hard, why not just give up? It would surely be a lot easier than trying. Failure isn't that bad, besides another opportunity will surely show up...right?

I really did think about this over and over and over, trying to figure out why most people just keep trying over and over and over. Refusing to give up even when it seems like there is no chance to succeed. Then it hit me...failure isn't that scary.

Hear me out on this. I remember the first time I went ice skating, it was terrifying. Its literally hours of just trying to stay upright and hoping and praying you don't fall. Falling hurts...a lot. On that first outing all I kept seeing over and over was the people falling around me. The thuds and the screams coming from these people was enough to convince me that falling was something that I did not want to do. So much so that all I focused on at the beginning was not falling and as expected it ended up making the skating process quite hard. Imagine a ginger bread man trying to walk...yea. Eventually the first fall did come and it hurt, quite a bit. But you know what, it hurt a lot less than I thought and after that I stopped being scared of falling. From that point on I was basically fearless on the ice and a billion or so falls later I am semi decent on ice.

Moral of the story? Falling isn't as bad as it originally seems and once that first fall comes it opens numerous doors. In that same way, failure isn't as bad as it seems. Originally the thought might be terrifying because good lord, its failure! But once we taste the bitterness of failure it slowly conditions us to look beyond the failure. We never want to experience failure again but the first taste makes us realize that failure will happen sometimes regardless of what we do. In that it offers some simple guidance because failure is sometimes inevitable.

So there we are, failure isn't that bad a prospect. But then why do we keep trying over and over to succeed, always refusing to give up? Simple, failure might be inevitable but who knows when the next chance at success will come? Lets go back to the original example where I need to pick up dry cleaning to make rent. If I fail at my task then in the short term I lose my job and perhaps I cant make rent. That sucks but I'll live, maybe I can talk with my landlord. What's really terrifying is the uncertainty about my job prospects. If I don't get that dry cleaning, I lose my job. My J O B! Who knows when the next job will be? That my dear friends is uncertainty. The prospect of immediate failure is never that bad, its the uncertainty of what comes next that propels us. It makes us do superhuman feats.

Failure is good, it allows us to learn. Whats more, it allows us to stay away from the uncertainties that come afterwards. This is the essence of the human spirit. We will face adversity, we will face certain failure head on because we have been conditioned to do so. From the smallest child to the strongest woman this is true. We do this because failure is something we can understand. But uncertainty is incomprehensible. And we will do whatever we can to keep it at bay.

I have never been scared of failure because I know the taste of it and have learned to accept it. What I can't accept is not knowing what comes next if I fail. If you've read this post up to this point please understand the difference between the two concepts. One I can walk away from , the other will take me kicking and screaming. Maybe I'll be able to keep that beast away until the day I die of old age surrounded by the people I love.