Today some friends and I mentioned a great guy we know who is also a really impressive athlete, as well as a loving father, a caring husband and a beloved friend. Except that lately he seems to have lost his bearings when it comes to his athletic prospects. He seems afraid. He puts off taking on big races because he fears he might do poorly, and he seems to think he could not leave with that (whatever "doing poorly" means: not placing? not beating a PR? not meeting your own expectations?).
That got me thinking: why do we fear failure, or what we perceive to be failure? What do we think might happen if we do fail? Are we really envisioning catastrophic consequences when instead there might be none, or even positive ones??
I am writing this not because I don't understand this man's struggle, but because at different times it has been very much my own struggle. I too fear failure. I refrain from doing some things I would love doing because I am afraid I will not do them well enough, or look stupid doing them, or come in last. But I also have been in a place where I could see that this way of thinking is really the only failure: the failure to try and see where something takes you.
Ultimately, we cannot know with any degree of certainty what the results of failure (or what we perceive as failure, but I am going to stop qualifying this phrase because it is annoying!) might be. For instance, I could say that I failed at my present career: I did not get where I wanted in the academic world, I was not able to publish as much as I wanted, I never won teaching awards or other formal recognition for my writing. So, some might say, I failed.
True.
But I am also about to embark in a new career journey that opens up some truly exciting possibilities, that allows me to learn and expand my thoughts well beyond what I thought possible a few years ago. I am going to school to become a physician assistant. One day I might be assisting in surgery, or working with cancer patients, or helping repair bones. Who knows ...?
It all seems to intriguing: from the chemistry classes, to the anatomy lab that I hope to take this summer, to the prospect of working with a team of physicians and nurses to help patients regain their health, their functioning, and help them flourish. I can hardly wait to be in this new world.
And this world would not have been anywhere on my horizon had it not been for my failure. If that's what it was.
