"Thomas Edison failed 9,999 times before he finally invented the light bulb."
"Even the best baseball players fail 7 out of 10 times."
If you have read any success literature, then you've read dozens of these platitudes.
They're true, absolutely true. They're also incredibly hard to connect to one's own life and experiences. In our weakest moments, they seem completely worthless.
I was not raised to fail, and I never embraced failure. I found the things I did well, and I did them. I stayed on that narrow path and never ran into the brick wall of defeat.
Now, suddenly, failure is not some distant concept that I know is a stepping-stone to some other distant concept called success.
Failure is real. Failure hurts every time. Failure numbs me. It makes me doubt who I am. It tests every bit of my resolve. It makes me wonder if something called success even exists.
My real-life example is dating and trying to succeed with women. I am diving into it, and my successes have been few and far between. My failures have been plenty.
Each time hurts. Each time, I want to give up. Sometimes I do, for weeks. Sometimes it only takes a day. Then I throw myself back at the wall, get bruised all over, and run away again.
Every failed date, every girl who doesn't like me or who would have liked me if my skills were better - every one kills me. Every one makes me feel like I am nothing.
Each time, I swear this will be the success on the other side of failure, that I am finally there. And then the game slams the door in my face again.
And even when I can walk away and know I am okay and immediately think about my next chance to succeed, there is an unshakeable feeling below all that.
It says that I suck, that I failed this time because that's who I am, that I will always fail and that there is no point in continuing.
And all I have to counter that are my few successes, and platitudes about inventors and baseball players, and the examples of successful men and women I've never met before.
Those examples are all I have, and at the same time, they are worthless. I am running on blind faith, and it is hard.
I am sick of Lou Gehrig and Thomas Edison and Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and all the other people who perservered and succeeded and weren't me.
If my best friend succeeded at the same game, right before my eyes, I would still only have this blind faith that hard work and determination would lead to my own success.
This is the first great test of my life, so I have no uplifting advice at the moment. I am running on shaky faith, with only some overused historical figures to inspire me.
I guess this confirms, for me and maybe you, that the road is hard and soul-killing and seemingly endless.
I wish I could confirm that the reward will be worth it. I've certainly heard hundreds of people swear it is true. But right now, I don't know.
4 comments:
You need to turn the navel-gazing shit off. It's just fucking. No big deal.
If you're striking out all the time, then it's not about picking up women but about fixing how you move through the world.
You say you're introverted. Then fix that shit.
What else is wrong? Bad clothes, bad haircut, bad image, bad physique, bad health, bad finances, bad attitude, bad social skills? Fix that shit.
You are one sheltered pansy if failing to pickup women is the biggest failure you've faced. Get out of your shelter and tackle REAL shit. Challenge yourself, fail, struggle hard, and grow. I bet you went through life without ever having your ass kicked or without having participated in any contact sport.
Without failure, there is no struggle. Without struggle, there is no growth.
Thanks, Yoda.
How come the biggest, baddest people on the internet never leave their name or any contact information?
That other anonymous is a real jerk.
If you look at most people's love life, it is full of one failure after another-- if you define not marrying the person and staying together forever as failure. But is that necessarily failure? Maybe ended relationships aren't failures-- maybe they're just over.
If you've never had a girlfriend then it's easier to see dating as a continual failure.
But consider that this would make every single person a failure. And even the success stories were preceded by a long series of "failures."
***
Of course, I type that knowing full well that while I've had successful relationships, I've never had them with the people I loved most deeply/passionately.
To survive this emotionally, rather than think I failed I prefer to think the ones I loved were a bit foolish, cruel even. I give them more of the blame than I give myself.
ignore the anon above.
i played every sport there is, and excelled at them. there's a good chance i can kick 99% of the world's asses right now.
and i'm fucking mired in depression right now myself. it's a hard place to be, but the wave always passes, brother.
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