Every morning my phone beeps with yet
another inspirational message. Today it is about failure. I have been
enlightened that ‘Failure does not mean that YOU are a failure, it just means
you haven’t succeeded yet’. Sometimes I am reminded that ‘Failure is not the
opposite of success but a part of it’. I quickly read these ‘inspirational’
lines and think about the people who most need this advice. Thereafter, I do my
good deed and forward these quotes to other groups and individuals. I suspect
that the others also treat my message as lightly; they skim through it, smile a
little and pass it on to other groups or individuals.
How many of us actually pause and think
through those lines? How many of us question ourselves about whether we apply
these lines in our own lives? I am a part of many messaging groups and apart
from the regular pearls of wisdom these individuals share with me, I am also
privy to the tears of failure shed by them. So why the disconnect between their
actions and these wise words they wax eloquently?
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When children learn to walk they fail over
and over again. They barely manage to pick themselves up and falter and fall;
they manage to stand up, walk a few tentative steps and fall; they learn to
walk and stumble and fall. This repeated process of falling is painful but the
child persists because s/he doesn’t look at it as a failure. All through the
process the child is supported and cheered on by her/his parents. S/he even
gets rewarded with hugs and kisses for her/his every effort. When the child
finally learns to walk the parents behave as if a small miracle took place.
Yet when the same child grows up s/he is
filled with fear of failure. It may be as a result of parental pressure,
societal pressure or the schooling system. Whatever the reasons, now s/he feels
more vulnerable. The same child who was unafraid of physical hurt is now too
scared to perform because of emotional trauma attached with failure. S/he is
afraid of being exposed to ridicule from others if s/he fails or suffers from
the ego-centric belief that ‘I should ace everything I try’; or simply has not
been taught to appreciate the virtues of failing.
No one taught us in our growing up years
that there is a joy in trying, that the process of failing is indispensable to
success. That there is a lot to be learnt from our failures if only we are open
to feedback and observe carefully. That we fail not from the lack of
perseverance sometimes, but from the lack of identifying our own self-defeating
tendencies and correcting them.
Far too many times we talk only about the
success stories and their accomplishments. Rarely, do we highlight the number
of times they fell before achieving their goals…if only we could keep that
memory of a child alive in our hearts, we may have fallen in our struggle but
that does not mean we have failed.
