What can you do when you fail?
How long does it take to lose three years of work in a digital world? Only as long as it takes a finger to hit a delete key.
Poof!
It is gone-zip-kapput! Faster than you can hiccup.
When you fail what do you do?
How long does it take to crash an automobile? Or start a forest fire? Just about as long.
Most disasters in life happen faster than a cat’s tongue and yet the world continues to turn on its axis, the sun continues to come up, and if you are like me, you continue to kick yourself for not knowing better.
I knew better than to hit a delete key when I was deep in the bowels of my computer with no experience in this foreign land.
I thought working alongside a friend who makes a living as a web designer would give me the oversight I needed.
The first lesson for me – navigating digital landscapes – is fraught with unseen dangers and it isn’t dependent on how smart or experienced someone is. I am grateful she was there. She saved me from the ‘stupid attack’ that can hit after a ‘Poof’.
I have said many times that mistakes in life have taught me so much more than my successes – a wisdom that I want to leave as my legacy.
Can you hear my great-great-grandchildren now discussing their ancestor (me).
“Did you hear the story about the delete key?”
“No, what is a delete key?”
“That was back in the day when writing and music and art were stored in the heavens above and if you used the wrong key you were not allowed in to retrieve it.”
“No! You’ve got to be kidding! What did she do?”
“She wrote a book about the real key to life being not on a machine, but in the community around us. It won the Pulitzer Prize!”
Don’t I wish I could leave such a testimony to my descendants!
When you fail – file it!
1. Humility
I keep a list of things I want to write about and when I look over the list, everything there is the fruit of a lesson I learned by failing somewhere else. I keep ‘failure folders’ to organize my screw-ups.
One of my folders is labeled humility.
Let me tell you it is not possible to write about humility with authenticity if you have never landed on your backside in a mud puddle.
No one wants to hear a theory about humility. The story of forgetting my wallet when treating a friend to a fancy lunch is so much more relatable.
2. Compassion
Another folder is labeled compassion.
I want to be a compassionate person, but there is a dear cost to that ambition.
I cannot have real compassion for a homeless beggar on the street without knowing hunger in my own soul.
So I do an inventory of unmet needs as part of my spiritual practice. Areas where I have known abandonment and judgment and powerlessness.
It isn’t easy to acknowledge the similarities between myself and the woman who sells her body to survive.
I’d rather see only the differences. The practice of seeing similarities invites in a lot of anger and sorrow, from which I want to turn away.
No wonder why it is so hard to look a panhandler in the eye. I am looking at myself.
I could not befriend a convict with any authenticity without having made my share of poor judgments and seen my capacity to do the same thing that got her incarcerated.
The only difference between me and a drug pusher or a murderer is circumstances. I am blessed to have had love, support, resources, and kindnesses in my life such that I never got close to that line.
But am I capable given a different set of circumstances? I know that I am, for I have killed before.
I demolished another person’s dreams by my selfishness, I have been a pusher of ideas on people who find them toxic, and I have exercised poor judgment in every area of my life at one time or another.
3. Patience
The third folder in my spiritual practice file is labeled patience and includes reflections on waiting, pacing, the idea of SLOW, and saying ‘no’.
How do I know there is value in these things? We aren’t born with patience like having blue eyes. At least not I.
I can’t see patience in the mirror. I don’t even feel patience many times.
What I do see and feel are the results of failing to use patience, of saying yes to too many shiny things, of neglecting to have a rhythm to my life that includes taking time to pause.
To rest. To breathe with intention.
Have you noticed a theme here? The sources of everything I write about are my failures.
Like hitting a delete button, every time I engage in overeating, in impatience, in the judgment of another, of overspending or failing to exercise, there is a giant “Poof” as a piece of me disappears into the ethos…or down a rabbit hole.
By the way…a rabbit hole is not a hole of shame. It is a sanctum of growth and wisdom.
The next time you find yourself listening to the “Oughttas and Shouldas” singing harmony with all your failures, picture yourself at a concert and applaud the performance with gusto.
Every failure brings with it a wonderful gift. that gift is found in examining the file folders.
Do you notice a theme when it comes to filing every wrong choice or limited attitude? Notice that all the file folders are labeled ‘Spiritual Growth’ – Humility, Compassion, Patience.
Our failures become the garden for fruitful, loving lives.
May you always find the hidden blessing in each faux pas and be gentle with the emerging saint within.
[Photo credits from Unsplash – Finger by Erik-Mclean; delete key by Ujesh Krishnan; files by Absolutvision; Patience by Duane Mendes]
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