Day 93
failure
I strongly dislike this word. Like all people, I fail frequently. I try. I fail.
Failure is like a fog. It settles on you and you can’t see anything. You cannot locate yourself because you have always used your successes as the signposts. What you are good at, how you want to be perceived, what you want to become; these are the markers by which you locate and navigate. Then suddenly you are in this fog of failure and though you have not moved and the signposts are still there, you cannot see them, you are lost.
Do you drop to the ground and belly-crawl out? Do you wait patiently for the sun?
At a certain point, I experience failure as a common weather pattern that rolls over me. “This is failure” I think to myself, not always even sure where or how I have failed. It is just a sudden sense of loss, of confusion, of fear.
Sometimes I fumble through with my arms stretched out in front of me, fingers searching. Sometimes I wait. Lately, I have taken a more sensory approach. Instead of reacting, afraid, I try to see where the fog is thickest or thinnest. I open my mouth and taste the dampness of the cloud about my head. I smell the rain, I wipe the wet confusion from my face. I close my eyes and dive into the feeling of loss. Lost in the fog of my failure, I am not distracted, for I cannot see what is around me. Yet, I can go inward; and un-tethered to the material world around me, the markers of my success suddenly vanished, I discover something new. As the fog dissipates, the sun breaking through and making spiderwebs of color through my eyelids, I resurface: wiser.
