Why failure comes first_6.1

Fools guide to saving the world, part 6

I am so comforted by reading. It’s like a delightful antidote for the crushing shame that sometimes threatens to swallow me whole in a thick, gooey mud till only my nose is peaking out. I'll let you into a little secret. It’s not great I know, but sometimes I’ve been known to slide beneath the surface of that shame as well…

And when that happens I feel worthless. The world feels worthless. Trying feels worthless.

The catalyst for my shame is mostly my own imperfection. I am not perfect, in fact on a scale of perfection, I probably score pretty low. My first marriage was a disaster and sadly we are much, much more allergic to each other now than ever before. My first real attempt at business was like a shooting star, we went up in a blaze of glory and then exploded in fountains of my own hubris and some people's bitterness. My second real business was the most specular. In fact, it was a proper cluster cuss. There’s no other way to describe how magically spectacular our failure was when it all came crashing down even though we served one hundred thousand of the poorest of the poor free WiFi for almost two years.

So yes, some people don’t like me. Some were pretty vocal about that. And all ten of their complaints from the past live real and present in my mind and, if I let them, create an echo chamber of accusation that can rage from the minute I finally fall asleep (sometimes thanks to taking a sleeping pill or gripping a teddy bear really, really tight) and can start again the moment I wake up. On and on and on and on and on and on their voices can go….

And then I sit down to do this. To write… about love … about ‘saving the world’… about trying and my own imperfection rears its deadly head like a spitting cobra and stares me straight in the eyes and says 'Who the F do you think you are?’

And that’s why I am so grateful for reading.

Words. Words are so wonderful, powerful too. Maybe even beyond measure? They have the ability to transform and renew our minds if we would let them. To tell us all is ok. That imperfection is normal and beautiful and the way things are meant to be. No imperfection, no evolution. No evolution, no life. No failure, no change. No change… ok … yes, you're smart, you got all this already…

So, yes words, oh those beautiful words; they give me solid ground to turn to when my minds is mush from being hacked apart by my own thoughts. Words allow me the space for mindless meditation and repetition I need to carve out new neurological pathways of thought that liberate me to try and fail and overcome and try some more.

So I find deep, deep solace and joy in all Lincolns failure then. Doris Godwin Kearnes Goodwin’s window into his world has become a well battered balm to my soul. I often also muse about Churchill, that great and masterful artist of mess and courage who just wouldn’t stay down. Arianne Huffington is in there to (my mind that is); and of course Aunty Anne Lamotte. And oh, let’s not forget about Teddy. I love Teddy Roosevelt like a father. I love all his spectacular destruction and ooomph and I love more that he too had to talk himself off a ledge so often that he created a quote he would mouth over and over again until it became truer for him that all the raging accusations that came against him night and day.

“It is not the critic who counts; He once said. And it's definitely 'not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. 'The credit...'

This is the point my voice breaks if I am reading it out loud:  

'The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again,

I am undone by now, no turning back:

'because there is no effort without error and shortcoming;' ¹

Yes! If that's not my freedom I don't no what is! Yes, credit does belong to those:

'who actually strive to do the deeds;
who know great enthusiasms, 
the great devotions; 
who spends themselves in a worthy cause;  

And here is liberty itself: 

who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement,  
and who at the worst,  
if they fail,  
at least fails while daring greatly,  
so that their place shall never be with those cold and timid souls 
who neither know victory nor defeat.” 

1. 1America has a wilderness and had a middle income, equal society because of Teddy’s trying. How cool? Just imagine a world without that?