Failure is an ironic phenomenon. For something deemed so negative in the short term, it sure bestows us with some of the most positive gifts long-term. It affords us humility. It makes us stronger. It permeabilizes us to our own weaknesses. It’s a necessary part of life; without it, we grow to a state of incompleteness. In order to be truly successful in life, I believe that we need to fail.
We start young adulthood and embark on a journey to maturity filled with so many plans, so many dreams we’re so sure that we’re going to accomplish.
With plans of college and graduate school, I carefully orchestrated a career in science, planning to go as far as necessary in my education to achieve the position of university faculty with my own research laboratory. I truly love teaching - such a position would have given me the perfect outlet, plus given me the scientific freedom to answer my own questions, satisfy my scientific curiosity, feed my intellect. Priceless.
I dreamed I would find the Romeo that every little girl dreams of finding. He would give me that wild, intoxicating feeling of butterflies in the stomach, mixed with frenzied heartbeats, trembling skin and weak, watery knees with so much as the mere thought of his name. I wanted “to have and to hold”. I envisioned “till death do us part”. I dreamed of “happily ever after”. I would give every ounce of my heart and soul to him and together we would start a family, the ultimate proof of our love for each other. Being a hopeless romantic is perhaps one of my greatest weaknesses. I always said I wanted more than one child so that they had each other once we were no longer on this earth. I couldn’t wait to be the best wife and the best mother I could possibly be. A dream.
We’re so gung-ho when we’re young. We set out to conquer the world. We’re bold, confident, so sure that we’re going to accomplish every single one of the things we set out to accomplish. And indeed, many people are lucky enough to be able to do it. But many aren’t.
My degree plans materialized only part way and therefore so did my career. It’s not what I originally set out to do. It's just feels like a job.
My ‘to have and to hold’ plans have yet to materialize. After 7 1/2 years I have one failed marriage under my belt. I'm alone once again, still looking for “the one” with whom to go through the second part of my life. I guess I've always believed that we're not put on this earth to go through life with that kind of loneliness. Each and every single gift life gives you is so much sweeter and wonderful when it's shared with a soulmate. Every difficulty is made more bearable, every hurdle more easily overcome with that special someone, that rock.
My motherhood plans will never be, now unable to bear children. Adoption or step motherhood is my best bet, but neither would mirror my own flesh and blood.
Middle age is a crossroads. It allows you to see the obvious: one half of your life has passed, with no chance of ever recapturing any of it. But it also allows you to recapitulate, to look back, to reflect, to start fresh on the second half. How many of my plans did I actually accomplish? At how many of those plans did I fail? What am I going to do with the second half of my life?
It was a pretty hard blow to reach middle age and realize that I failed at pretty much every one of the major plans I had made in my early adulthood. The word "failure" never hit harder than at this point in my life.
But from this failure came humility. Enormous strength. From failing came wisdom. From failure came a state of completely realizing who I am as an individual. What I want, what I need, what I will and won’t put up with. I came out knowing myself better than I ever thought possible.
I don’t know that I should plan anymore. For the second half of my journey, maybe I’ll just let the chips fall where they may. It would be nice to travel on this road with someone other than myself, but I’ll just leave it up to destiny to set that up for me. I’m tired of trying so hard to make that happen. I’ll take the journey one day at a time, for plans are just that: plans. Nothing in life is guaranteed. We only have today. We don't know a thing about tomorrow.
We’re a reflection of the road on which we’ve traveled. It has shaped us into who we are today. The past is a mirror; through it we can see what we’ve become. Failure has played a major role in making me the woman I am today. I feel the strength, the confidence, the wisdom that were born from it. What an irony that these gifts came from failure.
"It is fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure." - Bill Gates
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