All of us are very afraid of failure. We have been taught to believe that we are good enough, smart enough, worthy enough and worthy of enjoying life only if we are successful – successful as defined by the parameters of society.
These parameters are often governed by the profits we generate or the salaries we earn, the volume of sales or the number of customers we acquire, by the goods we can buy and accumulate and money we can spend.
While these parameters are okay to live a comfortable human experience, we forget to define how much is enough really. We forget to introspect whether the desire is fuelled by our comparison with others and hence arising out of our innate insecurities and deep rooted feeling of being not good enough or whether it is fuelled by our passion to fulfil our true potential and eventually to contribute and be of service.
If we are unable to meet some or any of the above definitions of success, we consider ourselves a huge failure. We compare ourselves with our peers, neighbours or competitors and MEASURE our success by these benchmarks which we often assign to our own self.
Not only do we wallow in misery because apparently we failed, we also take a dig further in our self esteem and sense of self.
The definitions of success and failure that exist are not only superficial and irrelevant, in my opinion, but they also bypass a few very important facets of the human and soul experience.
We are taught to feel shame when we do not succeed. We are not taught that every so called failure is a huge teacher – a teacher who can lead us to a deeper exploration, understanding, healing and awareness of the SELF, should we see it that way.
If we do not label the incident or experience as failure or success, it has the potential and the possibility to lead us through a process of death and re-birth, deconstruction and reconstruction just like nature that is born, that dies and rebirths itself over and over again.
Deconstruction and reconstruction is such an integral part of nature but even though we are embodiments of nature, we have moved away from nature and forgotten to view our life experiences as just that: an extension of death and rebirth. Death and rebirth keeps happening in our bodies too, intermittently.
Similarly our definitions of success and failure can either nourish us or create more shame and hence more toxicity in our lives.
Needless to say that the kingdom/treasure that awaits to be discovered is more often than not, not just overlooked but often not considered worth looking into at all.
Could we allow our so called successes and failures to seed in us just as an experience that leads to:
(a) Deconstruction of facets that we do not need anymore?
(b) Reconstruction and reclamation of facets which we might have ignored or buried deep within the self out of fear of rejection or retribution?
I leave you with the thought that we do not have to DO something to PROVE that we matter and that we are indeed worthy.
Thousands of years of programming that has been fed into our cells, will obviously take time to disintegrate and shed. Perhaps it may take many births and lifetimes to understand and embody the ultimate truth: I am whole and complete and worthy just because I EXIST.
While we mull over on these thoughts, the kingdom within us waits to be unlocked. Will we begin this journey?
Header Photo by Singkham.