get excited to fail
teaching my brain it's okay to not know
It is with a heavy heart I must announce that I’ve decided to let myself fail unconditionally. In life, in love, at work, in whatever thought du jour I’m getting restless and caffeinated about. We didn’t get here overnight, and I’m not sharing knowledge that’s well-tested and profoundly observed from every angle — in fact, it’s so fresh that if I don’t write it down right now, I’ll revert back to my old ways tomorrow.
The most common way of talking about the fear of failure is one I’ve struggled to identify with: it places too much importance on inaction, implying that being failure-averse means you’re incapable of trying things, paralyzed at the thought of starting something. Just let yourself fail, trial and error, right? But some of us have no problem getting from point A to point B even when the stakes are high — in fact, the higher the better. Giddy up and catch me if you can, I’ll bite the bullet. Not just because I’m crazy (that too) but because I cannot not do things; I will try anything at least once. For me, the fear of failure is not an action gatekeeper, rather a joy thief that manifests insidiously within the process of getting to the desired outcome. That is, doing the thing but never with pleasure or whimsy. Doing the thing and not reserving a moment of pride, serenity, or gratitude. Doing the thing and never trusting the process. Maybe they should invent a process I don’t need to trust… maybe they should make one that just works.
As a result, we’ve got a stupid case of deep self-distrust: the sacrificial dissonance between the hard-earned prize (because I did the thing!) and complete exhaustion coupled with existential disappointment at the finish line. What was that? What was it all for? Who am I?
Fear of failure is not an individual matter. An increasingly destabilized world requires cutthroat thinking and a steel facade, decapitating any attempt at starting from zero. Trying —real trying, the kind that comes with a margin of error, no guarantee of a specific result or success— is an inaccessible luxury. Inconvenience, much like learning, is demonized. We’re so repulsed and burdened by our own lack of knowing, in fact, that we’re willing to outsource the simplest of tasks to $19/month AI subscriptions just to fast-track ourselves to perceived expertise. We can barely ask each other questions anymore. Futility of life is for the weak-hearted where optimization is the status quo. And while the idea that a life devoid of failure is viable is a perverted fantasy, we continue to commodify and conceal uncertainty for an impenetrable perception of having it together, knowing it all, having the right answers to the right questions. Unfortunately, in this case, the dread ignited upon realizing you’re not the best at something is the unspoken cost of living in the age of grind.
