Capitalizing on loss.
If you've learned to love failure, you've found your breakthrough advantage.
Reality presented itself as four walls, pressing in on me.
I envisioned the walls made of fabric, and it brings to mind the way Jordan Peterson puts it, “When you twist the fabric of reality, it always snaps back.”
And I was learning that. Except to me, it felt more like I was pushing against the walls, and the walls pushed back against me. This was my perception of life, for many years.
Before I actually tried to take my place in the world, I was working with the assumption that I had total agency over my world. That I had an accurate understanding of this metaphysical fabric, and that anytime I wanted, I could get up and achieve the outcomes I desired in my life.
And I worked out of this belief. My choices, I made out of a belief that my actions would lead to a certain outcome.
And boy did those walls push back. I pushed forward, and they snapped back. I had no say in my world. It felt like I could make any choice I desired, but reality would never cave towards my desires. And I was right too. After all, my position in life made it evident. My desires and choices did not yield a positive direction in my life.
This kind of realization built something resembling the devil inside me. Here I was, the person who used to speak so boldly about faith and how to live without limits. The person who prayed boldly and had faith that prayer yielded only good fruit. The person who accepted everything as it came, as a beautiful step towards ultimate victory.
But here I was now. After only a few too many strikes back from reality, it truly felt like I was done. There was nothing positive in me anymore, only darkness. And I accepted the darkness. It seemed like the rules of darkness were the ultimate rules. Like darkness had power over light.
I turned to nihilism. To humanism and narcissism. As my hope drained away, I transformed into an agent of darkness. My inner world had completely collapsed under the spirit of despair.
And I spent so many years in this state. I denied myself the gift of joy, or even just happiness, even though I truly had so many blessings. I just couldn’t overcome the fact that I was living a life I had never wanted, and never planned.
There were seasons where I tried to overcome these walls. I lied to myself, telling myself that I was actually happy with my life.
And there were times I tried to overcome them. I’d go at it, working with a kind of manic madness, like a heavy metal attitude towards life. I’d expend all my energy in short order and collapse into a deep depression for weeks, taking out my bitterness and frustration on everyone around me.
But still those walls didn’t give. I had to grapple with this. It affected me so viscerally that signs showed up in my physical body. I was sick, I was weak, I was broken. And left without hope.
What was the way out?
I finally learned one thing about these walls around me: the one thing they do not control is my actions.
I considered this theme for a while, wondering what the worth was in it. How useful was this realization?
I also had to wrestle with this fact, because it felt like I was being called to make a decision. I was being called to choose whether I keep moving forward without the fuel of hope, or whether I surrender to despair.
It took me a while to make my decision. I spent a long time putting in half-efforts, with one ear to the ground, searching for any signal that might guide me in a definite direction.
But I had to make choices. There is no progress without commitment. So I did. I committed, and took action.
And the inevitable happened — I failed, over and over again.
And then I got up and tried again. And failed again.
This also went on for quite some time. But it didn’t end there. Instead, a pattern started emerging.
After each failure, I was a little less devastated. I started accepting it. I started caring about myself more than the outcomes of my actions, because the one thing I could feel good about was that, in spite of all the misery and everything stacked against me, I could live with myself. I was a lot of things, but I was no coward. And that made me like myself a lot more. And thus, my decisions started becoming better. I was starting to understand the fabric of reality. I was seeing the patterns.
Another pattern that emerged was this: after each setback, a greater breakthrough on the other side. I was learning that the one thing I could do well was to fail well. Those walls could never deny me that, and thus, the power from the snap-back was diminished. It couldn’t hold me down. Nothing could.
I realized this was my arena. I had the power to take responsibility. If there was any good to be found in failure, it was mine to claim. I could build resilience, if nothing else, and make it through life with my identity and spirit intact.
All of a sudden, the mountain no longer threatened me. Because this was my mountain. Yes, I perceived it as standing in my way, but maybe it’s better to have a mountain than to have nothing. After all, I couldn’t ignore it. I couldn’t snap my fingers and make it disappear, or pretend to myself that it wasn’t there. I had to accept it.
But this was my mountain. I could take from it what I wanted. I could climb upwards and fall, if I wanted. I could throw myself at it and see what its reaction was. What were its weak points? What did I have that the mountain didn’t have? What would the mountain yield if I went at it with the proper equipment and the proper attitude?
And I started enjoying it. Every time I fell, I discovered that I was tougher than I had thought. Every time I got back up, I had a little more respect for myself. Every failure, a win.
I know, there’s a lot of talk here about walls, fabric, and mountains. But symbolism really does have the power to save you. The story that saves you may be a visual story, seen and not heard. A story that’s seen in the very fabric (there I go again) of reality. The world is showing you the way.
You embody these stories, whether you realize it or not. You might not have actively chosen the current story, but you are living it.
The story of the being that always fails doesn’t have a bad ending, necessarily. Sometimes failure is your only option, and in that case, ride that failure straight toward the outcome that you want.
Make it your servant. It’s the one thing that you can choose and exploit to your advantage. If your only option is to take it all down to the roots, go down to the roots and build a better foundation.
If you’ve become comfortable with no’s, with setbacks, then there is nothing that can take you out. Ironically, this is when you realize your true power. You’re no longer attached to anything fallible. This means when one of your ships goes down, you don’t blink before jumping. Failure has taught you that you’re someone independent of your accomplishments.
So get out there. Your soul and your life are much too important to be subjected to fear and the harsh realities of life. This is how you overcome the walls. They say no, but you only need to remember that you’re made of the same material as the walls and the mountains.
You’re made for agency. You control your life.
It’s been said that the measure of your intelligence is whether you get what you desire out of life. In that case, choosing to fail might be one of the most transcendent levels of wisdom you could have, if it leads to the outcome you desire.
How else will you learn, if not through failure? This is how children learn — through doing and learning the consequences. Is it fun? No, but I found it’s one of the most beautiful concepts, once I outgrew my shallow view of failure. I embrace it now. It’s no longer a curse, but a very useful tool.
Failure teaches you much more than anything else ever can.
It teaches you what actions lead to positive consequences. It teaches you what consequences you would rather not live with. Failure is a scythe that cuts down everything to the roots and lets you plant better seeds.
It’s a blessing, if you can grow to the point where you are able to see it as such.
And I truly believe those who accept this will go further than they could ever have imagined.
Once that everything you fear falls away, nothing else remains to halt you.
Blessings —
John