Failure, what is it
Although we have complicated it, something Failing just means it didn’t work. That’s it. Now, since that doesn’t really clarify anything, let’s talk about what Failure isn’t.
Failure isn’t permanent. Failure isn’t necessarily reflective of the Failer. Failure has isolated damages, but new attempts only inherit the knowledge of Failings, making them more likely to succeed.
So, to summarize, it isn’t permanent, doesn’t necessarily mean anything about you, and every Failure strengthens the next attempt. If you were to take away the emotional detriment of failure, it almost starts to sound like a good thing.
How Failure is perceived
There’s almost nothing worse than being deemed a failure. If someone has labeled you an outright failure, they are telling you, “all your life efforts have amounted to nothing.” Jeez. I can’t imagine a phrase more capable of injecting bleakness into one’s self-image.
If you then began to see yourself as a failure, well, that’s where the real damage happens; when you internalize that they’re right, because the fruits of your efforts have yet to ripen. Let me be clear, it’s not your fault if you have internalized it, this could come from strict parents, societal pressures, personal misconceptions, etc., and blaming yourself is both wrong and can harm your recovering relationship with Failing.
Failer V Failure
I acknowledge that my indifference toward Failing likely stems from it being plentiful and embedded in my daily routine as a software engineer. Build errors, code errors, computer errors, 3rd-party library errors, you name it, I’ve seen it.
Now that makes me a professional Failer by definition, one who is paid to Fail. This is different from a Failure, however. Failurism is permanent, it is a label that is unchanging and uneventful, but a label that can be removed at any time. You see, Failure is a personal choice, a submission and surrendering to the friction that came with your dream. So when you Fail, and that Failing is followed by no remediation, now you are a Failure. We’re all Failures at some point, buffeted by life’s scourges of responsibilities and thought-occupying obligations. However, it is a choice to stay a failure. As soon as you take the smallest step toward the dream once more, you have swapped nametags from Failure to Failer. A very prestigious title, in my opinion.
Just as the programmer finds the error, fixes it, and moves on to the next one without abandoning the project or deeming themselves the worst programmer, so must you decouple the value of the things you’ve made manifest from the value you inherently hold as a person. In a healthy mind, they shall never meet.
You Failed, who cares?
To reiterate, Failure isn’t permanent. Who cares if it didn’t work out? Very few Failures in life reap irreversible damage, so don’t let something so massless knock you off your saddle.
Beyond programming, I’m an artist, and just as every artist before me, I have countless hideous, terrible, and skillless pieces that bear no aesthetic to even the kindest critic. But that’s the material product. Every consecutive piece got better in some way, or Failed in a new way yielding new knowledge, that know-how is the immaterial product; the true value of Failure.
Your growing immunity to the f-word
Now, it’s not lost on me that the goal in life is to Win, not Fail. You want to make the most beautiful piece of art, or be the best at your craft, or skill, or just be financially solvent. Sure, that’s what we’re all striving for. My claim has no friction with that, to have contempt for failure is to advertise one’s inexperience in life in general. You will fail at your dreams, and you will persist, and you will fail again. Now, this is finite, not permanent, not endless. Failure is completable, conquerable, then, once conquered, it’s time to Fail elsewhere.
With every Failure, comes a sweeter life.
“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.”
— Sigmund Freud
“WILL YOU JUST NOT WORK ALREADY?”
Go forth, Fail, learn, grow. In my many successes, vastly outnumbered by their related failures, curiously, I have found the failures to be what I reminisce most about.