The Springwater Holds Warmth
January 11–15, Hunenberg, Switzerland
Seasonal Memoir #50
Life is really just one big mental carnival, isn’t it? There’s the fun house, the rollercoaster, the spinning wheel, the freak show, and of course, bumper cars.
How we feel physcially certainly affects our mind (back pain causing agitation), and our mind can drive how we feel physically (agitation causing shoulder tension). Eastern philosophy does not see mind and body as separate things, but rather two very interconnected entities (if two at all).
The concept of “failure” is such an interesting one, intellectually, when looking at it from afar (but not when you’re in the middle of it!). If a baseball player fails no more than 7 out of every 10 times at the plate, he will be a Hall of Famer. Yet we often catastophize even one failure, no matter how small. Perhaps it’s because it taps into our insecurity about who we are as a person or as a contributor. It’s so hard to accept and learn from, especially when coupled with candid feedback, or even worse, a digital footprint.
I found myself reflecting on this concept after reading in The Atlantic about “failure parties”, where a group of woman would keep a spreadsheet of their failures, and throw a party each time they cumulatively reached 100. They described the exercise as cathartic, taking the power out of their failures, and helping them gain perspective about life’s realities.
I’ve certainly had my share of failures: fifty years of it, in fact! There have been formal fails, such as losing out on jobs I’ve coveted (Hawaii), a first marriage, or not ending a job in the way I had hoped for (Dubai). There have been many informal fails, such as articles not published or an interview for a book that went nowhere. There have been countless petty failures, such as not getting what I wanted.
The hardest fails of all for me have been falling short of my own expectations (behaving in a way that was not skillful, or staying silent when I should have said something). Those have hurt, and you can rarely repair what was damaged. The only utility you can take is the learn from it, and do better the next time.
The most frustrating fails have been when I have sought approval or acceptance from others, which taps into that insecurity, rather than seeking respect for my contributions. Trying to please, or be liked, or be seen as smart and capable, is such a slippery slope toward vanity, which opens us up to an ego crash. Our need for acceptance intuitively goes back millenia–there were life and death consequences from being kicked out of a tribe! But today, when we have so much security, why do we continue to attach ourselves to acceptance? There is some wisdom in the “I don’t give a bleep” memes (as long as it’s not you being a total jerk).
My favorite response to the failure problem in society is the college admissions “rejection board”, which I first heard of from Brookline HS (a high-pressure suburb of Boston). I’ve written about the absurdities of the university admissions algorithm in a recent post, so I love that some schools have offered and encouraged students to post their rejection letters for all to see. How much better they must feel as a result of letting go!
