We are more than our failures
You will never amount to anything. These words, once uttered by one of the most beloved people of my life, shattered me. For a long time, I clung to these words. And I allowed these words to shape me. It is hard to forget bitter and hurtful words in a world that is quick to critique and slow to appreciate. As the list of mistakes and failures kept growing, so did the number of people who lost faith and confidence in me. Slowly, it felt like the whole world had lost faith in me. I could see it in their eyes, the disappointment, the loathing and the disgust, and it crushed me. People had great expectations of me. I had great expectations of myself. And it shattered me when I could not meet any one of those expectations. My inability to harness my inner potential to its full extent frustrated me. I felt powerless in front of my inadequacy, opinions of the people around me about me, and my monumental failures. And despite my achievements, my mind was always fixated on little failures, mistakes, and countless imperfections. I had set the bar so high for myself that I could do nothing but stare at it with painful longing from down below. I was indeed worthless, I had realized, and a tremendous burden on this world. I was an utter disappointment, and people like me had no right to shoot for the stars. I laughed at the audacity of the raw, fearless dreamer in me. I mocked its courage until it learned to fear and doubt itself. I laughed at its unbroken spirit until its passionate, energetic roar turned into a silent sob. And eventually, it slowly deteriorated away, hushed and disregarded. It was hard being myself. I was tired, depressed and out of hope. I hated myself for being a failure and being so thin-skinned. I felt pathetic for feeling pathetic. These negative emotions made my life increasingly miserable by the second, adding fuel to my existing agony. It was unbearable. I thought that the only way out of the desolation and suffering I was experiencing was to shut down my feelings and turn off my feelings switch. No emotions, no misery, I had concluded proudly. And it worked like a charm. Everything was fine until it all started to fall apart. Bit by bit, second by second, I was quietly crumbling away from the inside out, entirely impervious to my collapse.
A year later, I was in a hospital bed with frail health and a messed up mind, thanks to my smart strategy of sweeping every troublesome experience under the rug. How did I end up here? I had asked myself. It was supposed to work. No emotions, no misery. So why was I feeling so dispirited and crestfallen? Being devoid of any emotional intellect, it took me a dozen tubs of ice cream and a few sessions of therapy to realize the simple fault in my perfect little, red bow-tied logic. There is no on and off switch for human feelings. There is no way we can ever shut down the part of us that feels. Everything, to a varying degree, affects us for better or for worse. And that suppressing it and running away from it only exacerbates the inner turmoil. You only end up making it worse, like trying to put out a fire by pouring rubbing alcohol on it.
We cannot shun our bad experiences, ignore our bleeding wounds or outrun our incapacitating fears. They catch up to us if not processed and dealt with appropriately, leaving us unhappy and dysfunctional. I started to face my wounds, to look at my broken parts not with fury and hate but with empathy and gentleness. To look at your wounded, defeated self and not hate it is not an easy task. It takes immense courage to look at your failures and not recall the disappointed looks, the unmet expectations, and the crushing feeling of inadequacy. It takes courage to stay with your wounded parts, your pain, to try to untangle, understand it and then heal from it.
Most people judge themselves and others by their economic and social worth. We tend to measure our value by our good or bad performance in different domains of life like job, education, relationships, etc. Most of the times, the criteria for this evaluation is the feedback we receive from people. Or by comparing ourselves to others. My inadequate performance in different aspects of life made me feel inept and without value. I was so far behind as compared to others. The quickest way to misery is comparing yourself with others. We often become impatient and want early success. But the road to success is filled with failures. And failures are there to teach us skills and lessons we need to get to the finish line. But because failure is often considered a gravely devastating thing, we overlook its positive, constructive aspects.
“Early success is a terrible teacher. You’re essentially being rewarded for a lack of preparation, so when you find yourself in a situation where you must prepare, you can’t do it. You don’t know how.”
― Chris Hadfield, An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth
Failures are natural and an integral part of life, of being human. But when we attach shame, guilt and anger to these failures, we either give up too fast or end up messing up our mental health. Such persistent negative feelings give way to doubt. And then every hurtful word feels like an obsidian spike punching an irreparable, ever-existing hole in our soul. Plagued by self-doubt and shame of failing, we readily believe them when they say, ‘You will never amount to anything'. I never forgot these words because they reflected a deep-seated negative notion I already held about myself. I saw myself through the eyes of the people around me and not my own. My definition of me was how people defined me or the performance reviews they gave me. But we get to decide who we are, not people, not our fears, not our failures and not our emotions. We get to define our worth, not our failures and shortcomings.
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
― Winston S. Churchill
