How failure is the biggest gift to being alive
What if being alive is the biggest risk you have ever, and will ever take, since ultimately being alive is fatal?
I guess it goes without saying then… Just do it! Leap and the net will appear. Rip off the band aid. Just go for it, you have nothing to lose. You only live once.
Right!
Right?
What if it isn’t that easy? Well obviously it isn’t that easy because we don’t just do it, leap, go, live.
So why then is it so hard for us, if what we are avoiding doing, leaping, going and living for is ultimately what we want?
What if the hardest parts are only the parts that we make hard?
In other words, perhaps we make things hard for ourselves, teeter-tottering on the edge, being afraid to do, leap, go, and live, and perhaps this is really the only part that is hard. The anticipation of the do, leap, go, and live part.
Gosh we are superbly complex.
We couch our desires in plans, and preparation, and perfection. We convince ourselves that we need more time, we need more contemplation, we need more readiness, we need more… Anything, before we can do, leap, go, and live.
We are always looking for a guarantee. And the absolute irony of this is that we warrantee our guarantees against our past experiences. Convincing ourselves that we need more planning, preparation, perfection, contemplation, so that we can improve the odds.
But what got you here, won’t take you there.
We want to improve our odds, because our past experiences that got here, are clearly not going to get us there. So then perhaps all our planning, preparation, and perfecting is done totally in vain, since we are planning, preparing, and perfecting through the lens of where we are now, based on the steps we took to get us here, which isn’t where we want to be.
What if instead we chose to take the next step in the direction of what we want without all the planning, preparing, and perfecting, because the only way we would know whether that were the right step or not was to actually take it.
Ok, sure one step in the right direction is easy enough right?
Then take another step, and another, and another, and another.
And you’re building momentum and this is actually beginning to feel quite easy, and you’re getting the hang of it, and you’re feeling confident.
Until. A. Failure. Stops. You. In. Your. Tracks.
And then you retrace your steps, contemplate what had happened, ruminate on the past, and decide that obviously because you didn’t plan, and prepare, and perfect, you are right back where you started…
But are you? If you genuinely took a step in the direction of what you truly deeply want and desire, then you would have to be going in a different direction, and perhaps the only thing that is familiar is the feelings of failure.
What if the path to success is paved with failure?
What if failure is actually just proof of all the ways to not get what you want?
We are brought up in a system that teaches us that to make a mistake is wrong, that to fail is bad, and to lose is detrimental. This is the backdrop to a society that contrasts right over wrong, favours perfection, and glamorises overnight success.
All this tied neatly into the ironic twist that life in fact ends in fatality.
So if all of this is going to end, and you have already taken the biggest risk of your life by being alive, why not just go for it. Hedge your bets, bet on yourself, back yourself, believe in yourself, trust yourself, because after all if not you, then who?
