Sometimes doing your best just isn’t good enough.
You pour in your heart and soul, you work at something for days, sometimes months, years even; you work at something with all you have in you, and it falls apart. It doesn’t measure up to what you had hoped for, it just is not good enough or it just plain fails.
You are not alone. And it is more common than you think.
It happens.
It happens in relationships, it happens to something you work on, it happens to the best of your passions. And whats more, it happens to the best of us. Sometimes you missed a crucial ingredient in what you were doing, sometimes its because life is unfair, sometimes it was because of someone else’s mistake, and sometimes, just sometimes, its because your best just was not good enough.
Despite what you tell yourself, despite the reasons you make up, you just did not measure up this time.
A tough pill to swallow orally. An almost impossible pill to swallow for the ego.
And when this really happens, the entire concept of ‘try to not have expectations with what you do’, or ‘doing your best, and its all that matters’ is suddenly just some drivel a bunch of feel-good, do-gooders conjured to make losers feel better. And you feel like you are part of them. And no, it does not help, if anything it just makes you want to smack them in their faces.
It hurts, it pains, there is a dark hole inside of you, this ache of helplessness that you cannot seem of crawl out of.
The simple truth is plain as it is simple.
You failed.
It does not matter why you did at this moment, suffice that you did.
Deal with it.
Accept it, because it has happened. Know that it since it has happened, it is in the past and there is nothing you can do in the present to undo it. Accept it not because you are gracious or because there is no shame in it, but because it is the only real way out- not of just this situation, but to remedy it- to move on, looking to the future.
This is the one time you must climb out of that dark hole inside of you. And then you have to do this time and time again through out your life. Practice makes perfect. You must learn how to climb out of that hole without a torch or ladder. And after a while, it gets easier. The old folklore of a battered Richard of Bruce and the spider comes to mind (Even without the folklore, after numerous back to back military failures, he did eventually win Scotland’s independence after all).
But today we do not want to try again and again. We have become an impatient generation, full of requirements of immediate self gratification. After one or a couple of half or full hearted tries we expect triumph, whether we deserve it or not. Our egos have strengthened but perseverance has dampened. When pushed into that dark hole of failure, we gape, aghast in horror as if this was an unthinkable bad dream. We then expect that ladder to be thrown in, or better yet, an elevator be carved out of rock, as if it were our birth right. But it does not happen.
Use my version of Newton’s tweaked brilliance here- when pushed into a corner, push back (or else you fold).
It is time to climb back into that dark hole and get back out. Bruised and battered, perhaps a stone might come lose half way up, or a smudge of moss might cause you lose grip or balance, to slip and crash. Its time to endure a few bruises and broken bones, to feel that battered ego, to feed your soul, not to give up and sulk at your luck, but to climb out into the light, outside of that hole, to come out stronger. There is no short cut, there is no reason to wail and wallow in self pity or misery. There is no shame. There is only endurance. And endurance does prevail.
That is what will separate you from another. You will not be good at everything you do, but endurance will dig you out of that hole. This is what will decide who you really are, if you are worth your weight in gold, or yet another rotting tree trunk. Wallowing is easy. And you are intelligent enough to know that much.
Judge not yourself on your failure, but on your reaction to it.
This will decide not the outcome of that instance, but your life.
This right here will become your definition.
This right here becomes you.
