It's fine if you don't

A life of failures

“I’ll accomplish tomorrow’s mission!” I announce with feigned enthusiasm. Standing next to dad’s hospital bed, I mentally run through tomorrow’s long list of errands for the hundredth time and, just like the ninety-nine times before, my stomach twists in anxiety.

Dad looks at me thoughtfully. Then, in that quiet voice of his: “It’s fine if you don’t.” He smiles weakly.

I smile back, grateful. The knots in my stomach loosen. Suddenly tomorrow doesn’t seem so scary.

Dad’s not finished: “Think of it as going for a fun drive. It’s fine if you don’t get everything done.”

All through the next morning, as I’m rushing from one task to the next so I can hurry back to dad’s bedside, I still hear dad’s encouraging words, can almost see his smile: It’s fine if you don’t.

A life of failures

I dreaded failure growing up. I was a straight A student, my school’s pride and joy and go-to representative for competitions in anything and everything—public speaking, general knowledge, singing in French, even manners. Every test I sat, the goal was never to pass—it was to get full marks. In my final year of school, I applied for Thailand’s most prestigious scholarship to study abroad. I didn’t only get it—I placed first. Failure was not in my vocabulary.

This mindset continued even as I began to fail. A C on a history essay in my first year of high school in the UK. A rejected application to intern at BCG, a company I’d pinned all my hopes and dreams on. Being shunned by my course mates at university after refusing one too many party invitations. Losing all my matches at a UK-wide Thai-student tennis competition. Having to interrupt my studies because of a debilitating depression.

Each time I failed, the failure crushed me. But then I’d set my sights on the next goal, tell myself the failure was a mere blip in my illustrious life. It won’t happen again.

I distinctly remember a conversation I had with my then-boyfriend. I was in my final year of university, in between depressions. He’d come to meet me after class and we were riding the escalator down to Euston tube station.

“Failure is unacceptable. I will never fail!” I confidently decreed.

“Failure is part of life,” my older, and wiser, boyfriend countered, not unkindly. “Everyone fails.”

“Not me.” I was resolute, convinced I had the right of it.

The conversation was threatening to become an argument. I glared at my boyfriend, mentally readying myself for a fight while attempting to read the inscrutable expression on his face. The escalator continued downwards.

“OK,” he said. We reached the bottom of the escalator and started walking. Neither of us brought up the subject again. A few months down the line, I’d be gripped by another depression—the most severe one yet. I’d become an invalid, failing to get out of bed most days. My boyfriend would become my carer, cooking me my only square meal of the day after work and cajoling me out of the house on weekends.

I was failing yet again. But instead of coming around to my boyfriend’s view that failure is part and parcel of life, as soon as I recovered, I wrote the episode off as another moment of weakness and commanded myself, never again.

It’s fine if you don’t

In the end, it took being incarcerated in a mental institute and a diagnosis of a lifelong mental health condition to change my mind. Gradually, I came to accept that it’s OK to fail, that failure is nothing to feel shameful about.

“A life of failures” has a negative ring to it, but it shouldn’t. Every life is a life of failures—no one succeeds in every single thing they do, nor should they hope to.

For if we never fail, then when are we to learn and improve?

Old habits, however, die hard. So when I received the A4-sized list of errands from my mom—car license renewal, paying taxes, groceries shopping, and more—earlier this week, my first response was stress. What if I mess up the car license renewal? I’d never done it before. What if the council won’t acknowledge that we’ve removed dad’s discontinued clinic’s signage and insist we pay this year’s signage tax? What if by the time I get to the morning market, the orange seller has packed up and left? Worse: what if—nervous driver that I am—I drive myself into a car accident?

I saw the list of errands as a mission I must accomplish at all costs. I must not fail. With dad in hospital and mom only beginning to learn how to drive our automatic car, I’m the only person in our small family who can stock the house up with drinking water from the supermarket. With mom having to care for dad 24/7, I’m the only person who can spend a whole morning at the council and sort out our taxes. I’m only in Thailand for a week. It’s on me to get everything done.

But when dad saw how stressed I was and said those sweet words—it’s fine if you don’t—I instantly realised my folly. What’s the worst that would happen if I failed? If I can’t get the car license renewed this time, I’ll do it next time I’m back—I’m only a cheap flight away. If I can’t sort out the taxes, we’ll pay the late fines. If I can’t buy enough drinking water to last my parents until my next visit, they will find another way to procure hydration—after all, they’ve managed for more than six decades to not die of thirst. If I get into a car accident, at the speed I’m driving it’s likely to be a minor one involving scrapes and bumps rather than deaths.

Of course it’ll be nice to get everything done and make my parents’ life a little easier. But it’s fine if I don’t. The world doesn’t implode. Humanity doesn’t end. And life goes on—as it always has, as it always will.

What do you think?

Are you afflicted with the same aversion to failure that’s plagued me for too much of my life?

Are you OK with failing?

Let me know your thoughts or, if you’re feeling brave, share with me your biggest failures so we can talk about how they probably don’t matter that much in the grand scheme of things (think: universe). Please hit “reply” or leave a comment—I read every response and I’d love to hear from you. If you want, share this with someone who doesn’t beat themselves up when they fail.

Until next Friday… Stay thoughtful,

Val

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Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash