I Want Failure.
L (No, not the L from Japanese anime Death Note) was taken aback when I told her that I secretly crave for failure. It stems from the deep suspicion I have for ’something higher’. Failure, that which is so terrifying, so real. I told L, that I often wonder (I am even lured to it sometimes) about that which is found in the debris when the tower of success is brought down.
Have we become achievement whores that we are willing to prostitute every memory to our lust for a unified, triumphant tale? And how we have defended our pleasure against the ‘voices’ of ‘emptiness’ which tempt us to leave the bosoms that we rest in.
I find comfort in St Augustine’s confession (from reading THIS article) :
But many people who know me, and others who do not know me but have heard of me or read my books, wish to hear what I am now, at this moment, and yet it is in my heart that I am whatever I am. So they wish to listen as I confess what I am in my heart, into which they cannot pry by eye or ear or mind. They wish to hear and they are ready to believe; but can they really know me?
Wow I am awed by the magnitude and depth of that first paragraph…I am still trying to digest it and imagine how it could be like….then my visuals took over….I saw a solid glass statuette falling…and falling (like those slow motion effects of movies)…when it hit ground I expected it to disintegrate…but it DIDN’T…it was just chipped on the head…but yet the chipped fragments dispersed far and near with some even in powdery form….the statuette is beyond repair (at least not to its original “beauty”)….would it ever be displayed again…perhaps it can never take front row on the display cupboard….perhaps the owner will never throw it away cos of the stories, sweat, tears and laughter that the statuette holds no matter how it is now…..I am quite sure the statuette will not be thrown away…but the fragments, are most often just swept away as debris…
Today’s advice is “failure is the stepping stone to success” and the motivation gurus never fail to bring Einstein as one of THE examples…
Err…I have to contemplate your statements all over again…reconstruct the failed thoughts and visuals and perhaps find the gems in the debris…..
hhmmm….’failure is the stepping stone to success’ - now it sounds like they have just raped failure
this sounds rather masochistic, at first blush. … but it is my belief that there is a time and place for everything - failure and success alike.
we’ve learned to prize success and to disregard failure, seeing it as a disruption on the path to success. perhaps the better way is to see life as evolution, a journey in progress. no one can really say they’ve succeeded or arrived. the journey matters more than the destination as long as we’re alive.
Wow! You’ve been talking to me about failure and I am already expecting to read it in your blog. Haha! I guess everyone have their own views on failure and I wouldn’t agree with you in your comment about “failure is the stepping stone to success”. I don’t think it sounds that it was being raped of its’ meaning. I felt it is only the choice of different people looking at failure in different frame. I would not be able to say that I know you for this long if I could not be accepting what you were telling me about failures. The other day, you were telling me about how people wanna make Christianity works when they believed in and how you wanted it to work so badly as well. I agreed with you that in life, we all try so hard for success which could be rather meaningless at times. One thing that really makes this friendship meaningful throughout this whole process at least I felt is that there never is any “push for success” in the conversations we have. And I’m glad to have come to know you when I first joined the church or not, I might not be the person I am today. The one thing that keeps me going to church all these times probably is because I believe it is not pushed to be a successful story although many are trying to do that.
Because when I first came, I met you and you showed me the way of the CROSS. At least I felt that. I felt a genuine love. I see and know that hope is not just words. And even today, I know that I’m grown up now and we have differ from our views in a lot of areas and I’m embracing that differences. Because despite of it all, we are still brothers.
Failure is something that not many can digest. I wouldn’t know what to do if I were to fail in the things that I wanted so much to achieve. Maybe some people chose to take this road while some the other. And through it all, no one will ever really understand that decision but the person who made it.
I would think of it as a story written by an author and how much the author enjoyed it is more important than what the readers would want to say. Because at the end of it all, the author wrote that story to share with people, not to force others to believe in what was written but to only share what he felt is important…and ready to listen to other stories as well.
Success or Failure? Somethings just can’t be black and white. =P