The other ‘F’ word
Mansur's Musings
A truly fickle funny beast. Something we’re often terrified of. The fear of it is grilled into us.
To fail is to try. To fail is to learn. Experiment. Failure presents an opportunity to reexamine, go back to the drawing board, and figure out if we want to try again or take a new path. Ironically, after failure there is no wrong answer. Each stumble becomes a stepping stone, a chance to reevaluate. A moment to pause and ask: Was this the direction I really wanted to go?
I’ve failed plenty of times but I have been a coward and not faced it head on as many times. When I caught a whiff that I might be failing a course in university I would drop it before I could fail. It kept my GPA neat and tidy but it also meant I failed to finish my degree “on time.” There was no true avoidance of failure, it would all come out in the wash. Delayed or disguised, failure became an unwitting friend.
Failure will always find us. And what an exciting prospect that is because to fail is also to live. It is a sign that we have reached and stretched into a realm beyond our comfort. Beyond the familiar, where growth takes root. The soil of failure may be rocky, but it’s fertile ground for reinvention.
Writing for a newspaper or magazine is great for acclimatizing to failure, because if you make a mistake (pretty much inevitable), even if an innocuous typo slips through, you have to accept it. Print is an unforgivable medium that way. Your failures are laid bare for all to see, but as quickly as they come, they are gone. You’ve moved onto next week’s issue before you even get to see your error in print. It’s liberating, in a strange way – your imperfections archived, but quickly forgotten, forcing you to focus forward.
Today, I still pant and preen at success, the kind that’s determined and bestowed by others. It’s not a sustainable kind of success because it depends on others too much to validate. Leaving a feeling of hunger for more, an insatiability that’s often more destructive than anything. One day, my own success will be determined by my own measurements. For now, I try to open my arms to failure.
A few weeks ago, I succeeded at something. I got accepted to a university in New York City for journalism. Last year at this same time, I had failed to get into Oxford for a different master’s program. The failure of yesteryear made possible the success of today. In the moment it can be hard to see, but with time and exposure to more failure, the trust in cheesy sayings like “when one door closes, another opens” gets stronger. Life is full of unopened doors and untravelled paths, many of which only reveal themselves when we stop fearing failure and start embracing what it grows in its wake.
