Failure and I are
twins. We have coexisted happily for
years now. It wasn’t fun in the
beginning. The problem was that I never
liked to fail. So in those early years I
did what one of the idioms in my mother tongue, Malayalam, describes as ‘roll
where you fall’ meaning make your fall appear as not a fall but a roll that you
chose. However, eventually that becomes
quite boring. Moreover, the onlookers
will understand your trick sooner than later.
One of the fundamental
and irrevocable truths of life is that people love losers. Losers make people feel comfortable with
themselves. Another such truth is that
it is easy to fail than succeed. Ask the
bulb man Edison who reportedly counted 10,000 failures on the way to
illuminating the world with his bulb.
That was a neat number: 10,000.
Lucky man Edison was to get such a neat number of failures unless he was
being metaphorical.
I find James Dyson a
greater consolation. He gives us a more
convincingly accurate figure of his failures on his way to the invention of the
vacuum cleaner: 5126. Dyson knew that
failure was more natural than success. Otherwise
he wouldn’t have kept count of his failures. But I guess he knew he wasn’t beating on a
wall hoping that a door would materialise sooner or later.
I was also trying to
create a door for myself. Every time my
door was about to take the final shape some mysterious force would come and
decimate it. The force didn’t come from
some other world. There was nothing supernatural
about it. I had a benefactor who
convinced himself that whatever doors I created were not good for me. Very, very few people, as far as I have
understood, are as privileged as I am to have such a benefactor. The benefactor is my twin.
Now I have got used to
failures so much that any success would shatter me. In fact, I feel a tremendous lot of gratitude
to my benefactor for making me such a failure.
It is easy to fail. It takes no
effort. Life is much smoother now.
This is written for
Indispire Edition 182 which asked the question what I would do when failures
break me. It is the question which made
me realise how happy I was with failures.
Very nicely written.. loved it.. failures are the stepping stone for success....
ReplyDeleteFailures are the stepping stones to nirvana 😀 Or at least, what Lord Krishna called Nishkama Karma 😁😁😁
DeleteA motivational post! Even I considered myself invincible but have become wise enough to make friends with my failures. I am happy to roll wherever the downward slope is created. It feels weightless, I feel like a winner defying my weight, defying gravity or is it surrendering to it?
ReplyDeleteLosing and occasonal winnings are something I consider as the inspirations for my blogs. Yes. That's how I treat it. Happily living my life through my blog. The outside world is just for the inspiration, one dives into it but for the moments when one needs the selfish need of words. Life is beautiful hence.
Only someone as cranky as I am can identify the motivational aspect of this post :)
DeleteThe present tendency to gloss over everything with "positive thinking" is a menace, I feel. People don't think because of that. Keats was right when he said that our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thoughts.
"Losers make people feel comfortable with themselves."
ReplyDeleteThat is so true..I can totally understand this :) A beautiful post Sir !
Thanks, Renu.
Delete" One of the fundamental and irrevocable truths of life is that people love losers. Losers make people feel comfortable with themselves"- Interesting observation.... and a good post.
ReplyDeleteI make a lot of people comfortable with themselves :)
Delete