Celebrate Your Failures

“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.” — J.K. Rowling

Growing up in a country like India, failure is something that is frowned upon and avoided. Failing in any task in such a country is equivalent to losing your face, which is accentuated by the fact of its rather high rates of suicide. Children are stripped of their curiosity due to this fear, which in turn kindles a generation without originality, creativity, or risk-taking ability. With the sparkle in their eyes gone and their childhood stolen, these kids grow up to be “the average Joe,” living a life of dogma, devoid of all its beauty.

A society like this forgets that there is no real growth without failure — it’s not always about what you want but also about what you need. Sure, failing hurts. In fact, it cuts deep like a razor, slicing its way to our inner core. Yet it’s necessary. If you go through life avoiding every difficult situation for fear of failure, then that life isn’t worth much. Sometimes falling flat on our faces is required so that we may get up and mold ourselves into our true potential.

Nevertheless, what I am suggesting is not to be confused with failing blindly — rather, analyzing that failure and taking it as an opportunity to work on yourself and grow through newfound knowledge, experience, resilience, and values. These will enrich your life, make it worthwhile, and you will emerge a better person for it.

When a baby is learning to walk, he is going to fall many times, but the mother does not become upset and start to resent his effort — in fact, she celebrates it, she applauds the baby. So what changed? How did that mother change into someone who resents failures, forgetting the subtle development that failure carries with it? The mother is the society we live in, and the problem with it is that it celebrates successes rather than highlighting the epic journeys towards success that are filled with challenges, tribulations, setbacks, and failures. It’s not as glamorous to talk about those things. Hence the society conditions us to avoid it.

So let all failures be celebrated, let the efforts be recognized, let personalities be molded, let horizons be explored, and let successes be examined, so that all the vast failures do not go unnoticed.