Let’s put things into a little bit of perspective here.
We are all living on a bit of rock called Earth which is one among the billions and billions of planets that exist in the universe.
This little planet of ours is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old.
According to the Population Reference Bureau’s estimates, around 117 billion people have walked the face of the Earth since 190,000 BCE, which was when the first homo sapiens emerged into existence. And currently, around 8 billion people live on it.
In the grand scheme of things, then, both spatially and temporally, as individual human beings, we amount to pretty much nothing. We are insignificant. Nobody will neither know nor remember what we have done about 100 years from now, just as we neither know nor remember what people before us had done generations ago, with a few chosen exceptions.
What’s more, not only do we, as individuals, not matter very much, but we also know that we are all going to die and descend into nothingness, out of which we emerged in the first place.
Praising Failure
Of course, these are not new ideas. I am not saying anything very new. Stoics in ancient Greece and Rome, for instance, wrote about these exact topics more than two thousand years ago.
Moreover, this is the starting point of philosopher Costica Bradatan’s In Praise of Failure, which offers a better and more humbling understanding of what failure means as an antidote for coming to grips with this harsh reality of being human.
What does Bradatan mean when he talks about “failure?” Not surprisingly, he has a very specific definition in mind. He writes:
Failure is whatever we experience as a disconnection, disruption, or discomfort in the course of our patterned interaction with the world and others, when something ceases to be, or work, or happen as expected.
According to Bradatan, how we relate to this sense of “disconnection, disruption, or discomfort” actually defines us as human beings and offers us a way of coming to grips with “our imperfection, precariousness, and mortality, which are all epiphanies of failure.” Instead of feeling a sense of humiliation, we can take a different path and see failure as a humbling experience. Only through humility, he argues, can we “be healed of hubris and egocentrism, of self-illusion and self-deception, and of our poor adjustment to reality” and therefore start our journey towards healing.
Having thus laid down his main argument, Bradatan then proceeds to analyze failure as four concentric circles, with us poor souls right in the center. I am most interested, however, in the outermost ring, which Bradatan denotes as the failure inherent in worldly existence.
Coming to grips with a flawed existence
Taking his cue from the Gnostic worldview, Bradatan states that the whole of existence is structurally flawed and that we, as humans, share this inherently flawed nature of existence. He writes:
Failure reigns supreme over us all: it determines the working of our minds, the shape of our lives, the circumstances of our passing through the world.
This recognition of “existence as failure,” however, does not need to be disheartening. In fact, according to Bradatan, it has its uses. It can, for instance, lead us to recognize ourselves as we truly are. Failure, as Bradatan argues, “gives us a chance to see our existence in its naked condition.” In a sense, coming to grips with our flawed natures strips us of all our accolades and all our anxieties about status, power, or money, while reminding us of how vulnerable and fragile we actually are as human beings.
Expanding outwards, an honest contemplation, and an understanding of failure also help us to see the world from a deeper perspective. Humbling ourselves in front of the vastness and complexity of existence, we can look at the world through a fresh set of eyes and recognize it as it is. Once we do that, once we adopt a perspective of humility brought about by failure, it wakes us up from our customary stupor. As a result,
Old presumptions are shattered, certainties fade away, reputable truths are put to shame—the screen of convenient labels, worn-out conventions, ready-made theories through which we are so used to looking at the world is suddenly torn apart. For a brief moment, before we come up with yet another screen—as we always do—we experience the world as a brand-new creation
We spend too much time trying to be perfect, trying to put up a strong front, and it is taking its toll on us. A more intelligent, healthy way forward may be to take an unflinching look at existence and accept that all of us, as humans, are imperfect creatures with our own set of flaws. We can all be a little bit more like Simone Weil (1909–1943), the French philosopher and political activist whom Bradatan gives as a model in his book and who, despite being acutely aware of her own physical imperfections (she was chronically ill all her life and was physically very fragile) and the horrible conditions of the world she lived in, chose to work with these flaws rather than against them and went on to live a short but remarkable life.
And even though I say this, I know first-hand that it is not actually easy to fully digest and implement in our day-to-day lives. It is not easy to be able to look our flaws squarely in the face and accept them. It is not easy to see ourselves and the world as they truly are and try to maintain a meaningful existence.
But then again, maybe this can be another instance where we notice our imperfections and try our best.
I would also love to know your perspectives on what “failure” means for you. How do you experience it? How do you deal with it? If you want to make your own contribution, please do so in the comments.
Until next time!
This is a very good essay on the subject of failure. Thanks for introducing Costica Bradatan to me.
Personally I had feared failure most of my life, because of my own panchant for worldly success and my perfectionism. But life has a way to teach me the importance of embracing failure as a fact of life, and to reframe it as a stepping stone in our non-linear path of personal growth. The more "failures" I experience in life, the more humility and insight I gain, and the more empathic and compassionate I become toward others. Most important of all, I learned about compassion toward myself and accept the parts that I used to reject. I'm still working on my tendancy of being hard on myself--that when I fall short of my self-imposed standard, I'd call myself a total failure. This is a life-long habit that requires some "de-programming." But being aware of it is a good start.
BTW, I recently started reading a book called "In Praise of Shadows" by Japanese author Junichiro Tanizaki. He talks mostly about the elevated status of shadows in Japanese architecture and interior design. However, the concept is parallel to Jungian concept that calls for embracing the "shadow side" of our psyche. My innerwork has been integrating the shadows to restore wholeness to my psyche. Working with my own idea of "failures" is part of this work.
This is such a good post. So clear and thought provoking.
My particular experience of failure is that I have constantly tried to succeed, whilst knowing that part of the reason I am not succeeding is that I always hold back a bit from fully trying, so I have it as an excuse for when I inevitably fail. Or maybe I am kidding myself on this point as well.
I also have tried to succeed at so many things that I think “surely I will actually be successful at something in the end” I then envision success, and whatever that currently looks like for me, and instantly know that if I were to “succeed” it would not make me happy or complete and would come with it’s own set of disappointments and insecurities.
Maybe too pessimistic 😊 but I don’t feel down about it, it’s just how I feel and I am okay with that.
I’m going to keep trying because I believe that moving forward and having a sense of purpose is important for good mental health… but— whilst in pursuit of a sense of purpose, I want to always check that I am working on whatever I am working on for the higher good and not as a way of validating my own existence …obviously this is too, something that I fail at all the time.