February 2022

A preamble:

My working day consists of 4 hours commuting. I spend that time reading, falling asleep, listening to podcasts or music, and writing. Essentially, I have 4 hours a day where my mind is only absorbing, processing, or assessing information with no distractions of conversation, of other people or of tasks.

A friend mused the other day that I never seem to stop thinking and isn’t that exhausting??! What am I trying to find?! Well, yes, it is exhausting which is why I took a spontaneous week off last week and retreated to my family home, turned off my phone entirely, and mostly cuddled the dog. I was still thinking of course, but I wasn’t having to do it alongside all the other parts of life like making my dinner and doing laundry and socialising.

I compounded lots of my thinking into (slightly) neater categories and one of them was this:

FAILING IS AN OPTION

So welcome to a new series… there are four parts, here’s part one:

Part One: Always Unqualified

‘Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.’

F. Scott Fitzgerald

To be qualified means to have prepared, and probably experienced, a vast combination of eventualities relating to a specific area of life, and then to be able to assess and choose the best option to questions or problems based on your acquired knowledge.

This applies to rock climbing, the GCSE History syllabus, or baking the perfect Victoria sponge cake. In preparing, you train yourself to remember combinations, situations, and outcomes so that when faced with a new route or question you will have done something so similar before that all you have to do is recall that memory and reproduce the result in accordance with this new variation. You are qualified when you have overwhelming and consistent success when tested.

This applies to most things where it’s just you: baking, running laps around the park, knitting a jumper. Sure, the weather, health, time of day and how much you’ve eaten might all affect an outcome to a degree but as soon as you add other humans, or multiple humans into the mix… there are now infinite factors that complicate every microscopic interaction and moment. This is the magic of our species. Unlike your solo baking escapades, no two life situations can be remotely similar.

Like death, for example. Or love.

We are always unqualified for death, no two experiences of dying or death are similar at all, there are too many factors at play. Similarly, we are unqualified for love. (Alain de Botton has some interesting stuff to say on this, have a read of his ideas in one of the most read articles in the NY Times ever…or watch his School of Life talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EvvPZFdjyk).

We will always be totally unqualified for these life experiences: friendships, being partners or parents, dealing with traumas and loss, for collaboration and connection. Life is a whirlwind of these things, some expected and predicted but many will be surprises, both glorious and devastating. All will be experiences in which we will fail.

There are two ways we might respond to this under qualification as we go through life.

Option 1

To feel out of our depth. Pretty permanently. Experiencing either a headiness and excitement or a state of being consumed and gripped by anxiety and panic. Facing the feeling of being swept along by emotions that are overwhelming and out of control (in good ways and bad). Always chasing our own thoughts, breathless to catch up, or letting them carry us somewhere unexpected. In this situation, we are likely to have sweeping highs and desperate lows, we are likely to make illogical and irrational decisions (for better or for worse). Our capacity to hurt others or ourselves accidentally or in the heat of heady emotion is heightened. We will, inevitably, make mistakes. We are faulty humans after all. In this state, we might run from the consequences because the guilt, regret and shame are too much to add to the already overpowering state of affairs, or perhaps we are moving so fast anyway that the trail of destruction is distant and never catches up with us. We are unlikely to learn or to evolve with this option. By not always taking responsibility for our actions and our experiences and leaving it up to the uncontrollable forces of nature and life, we will be left feeling both underqualified and probably a bit scared.

Option 2 is kinder, to ourselves and others!

To recognise and accept our own vast lacking and under qualification, and that of everyone around us. To expect failures and failings alongside, and wrapped up in, the joy and brilliance of life. Expecting tiny and enormous mistakes, seeing them as an unavoidable and, dare I say, an important part of existence. Seeing them as a route to evolving and understanding that although we can never be fully qualified, we can be more qualified than we were last week. Trying hard not to repeat any past failings but knowing that new ones will happen and that doesn’t make us any more terrible than we were yesterday (and people still loved us yesterday). Accepting our own faults can create space to own our failures instead of feeling crippling shame and guilt. Failures and mistakes have consequences, and it is important to feel the consequences of negative actions as they act as a deterrent for repeating that behaviour. Accept the consequence, amend what you can (it may be up to others to forgive you), move forward, and endeavour to do better next time. Evolve, grow, become MORE qualified.

These two options are extremes perhaps, and most of the time we end up a muddled combination of both but I know which option I would rather be my default setting, and I’ll talk later on about where forgiveness of ourselves and others comes into all of this.

Life is very complex and messy because we are complex and messy people. We cannot avoid failures, BUT there are many things that we do that makes the impact of failures feel so much worse. I’ll tell you about them next time... for now just remember:

The aim is to be more qualified than you were yesterday at all the things you are completely unqualified for.

More reading:

https://www.philosophytalk.org/blog/failing-successfully

https://www.stevenaitchison.co.uk/a-new-philosophy-about-failure%E2%80%A6/

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/opinion/sunday/why-you-will-marry-the-wrong-person.html

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/why-we-fail-and-how/

https://www.theschooloflife.com/

Podcasts:

How to Fail with Elizabeth Day (https://www.elizabethdayonline.co.uk/podcast)