Failure. Disappointment. Despair.
Heartbeats pounding in my head. A lingering emptiness in my heart. A blaring horn in my serene quiet.
Now, more than ever, I feel that I can’t do this.
—
In a moment of utter numbness, we run. We find every way out. I find any way out and to settle. We make excuses. We give ourselves an alibi. Any reason to not take the blame.
But right now, I take it. I take it on fully. It’s okay to admit that I was wrong. That what I thought wasn’t the truth. That I was avoiding what was right in front of me.
And it’s now, after thinking and thinking and thinking, that I truly, wholly and completely believe that failure and disappointment is a permanent fixture in life. And it’s okay. Because failure does not define us.
Two steps forward, one step back. Heck – three steps back. Seems like the story of the human race. Growing technological knowledge, efficiency in production and communication, increased living standards coupled with decreased human happiness, growing morbidity, environmental deficit and socioeconomic gaps so large that we can’t even begin to wonder where we went wrong.
And still, these setbacks and failures still do not define who we are. They don’t tell us we’re bad or stupid people. At least, not yet.
Because it’s what we do after we acknowledge our responsibility and our inaction that tells us who we are.
From world-scale to home-scale, these failures and shortcomings will plague us. And we have to rise from them and do what we can. Because what we do after the proverbial storm is what truly defines us.
And I, for one, will accept the responsibility for these failures with humility and live to see another day where I can, and I will, choose to make the better choice. And what these better choices may be will always change – I don’t expect to know the consequences of the “better” actions of today. But if we keep choosing the “better” choices in life, maybe the consequences will be less devastating, the failures less extreme and defining actions easier to make.