There is a narrative I ascribe to myself and my shortcomings. These narratives are suspicious — they are almost always on the negative side of my day-to-day life and what my future might hold. This is likely due to my need to control every waking moment, and then considering my profound sadness that creeps into most of what I do and reapplying it like a new coat of paint on my quickly rusting future. Almost always negative? How about that old saw which states if you flip a quarter 100 times, it will most likely come up 50 times heads and 50 times tails? When seen through the lens of probability this is likely correct, which is what I am kind of addressing here. We’ve all flipped coins — before there was a national coin shortage at least — and that tended to be the case. But when I think of my ability to succeed in something, the narrative is almost always negative. Now how can that be? Oh, my OCD brain would say it’s because I have mostly failed, but that too is hokum to the Nth degree. I have failed plenty, sure, but so have you and so has she and he and them. I focus on my past failures because I am afraid I am going to fail again. I focus on my past failures because it feeds into my narrative of myself as a failure, an outcast, a singular person.
Is there such a thing as a singular person?
I look to my failures to be my identity so that the next time I fail it will not hurt as much as the last time. When I am in my darkest moods, when my anxious brain demands I see the world as either this or that and will not allow an in-between, I structure my identity of who I am around my perceived shortcomings rather than my perceived triumphs (perceived doing a fair amount of work in that previous sentence). When the world is just this or that, the anxious and downtrodden mind will likely take the more negative option — at least this anxious and downtrodden mind will. I suppose it’s worth understanding what, if anything, this is doing to help further my time on earth. I suppose it would make sense if I was in a hunting and gathering society and I were to go someplace nearby to gather and, much to my surprise, there was a big monster wooly mammoth waiting to hunt and gather me. Egad! But do not fret, in this example I would luckily run like crazy and the wooly mammoth, despite his many positive attributes, could not coordinate a quick enough response to eat me. Therefore, I would know (or my brain would know) to not go back there to hunt and gather again because the last time you were almost hunted and gathered yourself.
Now update that for a 21st century, convenience-filled and complex world; a world which has, at least for the past 100,000 years or so, seated the humans on top of the food pyramid and you could make an argument that perhaps we have become a tad too complacent in chopping ourselves down. Sure, human nature and envy and greed and all that fun stuff. Sure, of course. But are most of those not borne in the same fear that I access each time I decide to tear myself down because I am afraid I am going to fail?
Again, sure. But what of the exhaustion of trying again and failing again and again and again? Well, what of it? Who said we were supposed to succeed at everything or even at anything? A religious figure? Count me out. Our parents? In general, they want what is best for us. So how about that loud voice in my head (and perhaps yours)? Is it possible that voice is so obsessed with pleasure and affirmation and convenience that it expects perfection from every effort and becomes an authoritarian dictator when anything short of perfection is achieved? I’d be suspicious of that from anyone else, but when it comes to me and my attempts, I too often feel I am being, still, somehow too kind to myself because I will brook nothing but perfection and God forbid I achieve it. If that happens, nothing will satisfy my gnarly, absolutist brain and I’ll likely just load up my pockets with rocks and walk into the nearest deep body of water. Sounds horrific, yes? I thought so too (with all due respect to the genius that was Virginia Woolf). Therefore, perhaps I should work on turning over my expectations to another genius, Samuel Beckett:
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
That seems like a good place to end this line of inquiry and reflection because I will never say it better. And I’m OK with failing at being more profound and succinct than Beckett. After all, he was a genius of the 20th century and I am…. well, I’m not that.
