Failure as a master 🆙

Etymologically, the word fail comes from Latin and means to shake, to shake. And failure, seen as failure, loss, is an opportunity to have a shake of life so that, who knows, the mask of a false self will come off and we will be more true to ourselves and, consequently, to the world around us.

The year 2020 was remarkable for many of us in many ways, both collectively and individually. For me, that was when I came face to face with failure. The goals I had set and considered measures of success failed. Then I found myself in an open sea, not knowing how to swim. The solution was to learn while the waves came and went and, through self-knowledge, I managed to get out of the camouflage I clung to towards the way back, who I truly am.

Among so many no's and disapprovals, it got to the point where I liked being failed. I felt peace with the emails that arrived and said that I had not passed a selection process, for example. I was already a little more aware of the fact that the path I insisted on, out of stubbornness and resistance, did not truly make my heart flutter. And I got stronger with every no. I've reached the peak of failure for me, but every peak has its downfall. I mean that the feeling of being a failure wasn't something that bothered me, what I didn't want was to receive the disapproving looks of other people. I understood, however, that by seeking approval from someone else before me, I was already failing myself. And in that apex of failure I surrendered. I surrendered to myself, to the flow, to who I am without wanting to appear to be.

From then on, the concept of failure changed for me and became my master, for it pointed through the shakes the way back home, to my own heart, where the only real approval resides. Coming back to myself, I understood that this was my success, learning to swim in my inner sea and not fearing the gales. My anchor should be in me.

Failure as a master — Yogendra Singh / Pexels

After this intense movement, I went out and went to a bookstore after so long in isolation and I came across a book in which I would like to share an excerpt. This is the speech by writer JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter saga, made at the graduation of a class at Harvard and transformed into the book “Very Good Lives: The Advantages of Failure and the Importance of Imagination”.

“So why do I speak of the perks of failure? Simply because failing means stripping yourself of what is not essential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I really was and started directing all my energy toward completing the only job I cared about. If I had indeed succeeded in anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I truly believed I belonged. I was released, because my biggest fear had come true and I was still alive, I still had a daughter I adored, an old typewriter and a great idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.” (p. 32 and 33).