Dropping

When failure appears, it comes not like a thief in the night, focused, quiet and dignified. It announces its presence and even sends messengers that it is on its way. Failure almost never sneaks up. Rather, it is confident when it comes and it never has to fake itself. There are times, however, when it can be beaten. Because it announces itself, there is time to head it off. It’s almost as if it gives you a chance. So destructive a force is failure, that it seems to know its own presence is heavy, leaden and destructive. It lets you know it will arrive–giving you a chance to deal with it, to fight it—or to succumb to it…

When it arrives, it is not kind, nor is it menacing. It’s not monstrous and devious. It need not lie about who it is. It’s rather like an American aircraft carrier–there’s no hiding its presence, so there’s no attempt to do so. When an aircraft carrier moves into someone’s local seas, it’s followed by the media and announced. An aircraft carrier is not a secret. It doesn’t sail beneath the waves prepared to launch missiles in the silent depths and then stealthily slither away. Rather, it lumbers, achingly, toward its goal, sending out jets and loud propellers as advance warning. You cannot hide from it–but your behavior might change its arrival. Just like failure, it galumphs off of your coast unless you find a way to defeat it–or at very least, give it what it wants.

Failure is a kind of friend. It means you no harm and at times it seems it doesn’t want to cause you pain. It seems to share in your misery with you, but like a compassionate judge, it merely lets you know that what you’ve done has invited its presence–and it can do little to comfort you. It almost longs for you to find an answer to its lingering.

It is rather complete and encompassing affecting everything and everyone around you. There’s no getting around it–career failure translates back to you. You’ve done something wrong that is unavoidable and so it makes you feel miserable. You bring this home with you and it colors your mood, drives those you love further away from you, or at least driving you into yourself. When that happens, it is as F. Scott Fitzgerald described madness in Tender is the Night: “But the brilliance, the versatility of madness is akin to the resourcefulness of water seeping through, over, and around a dyke. It requires the united front of many people to work against it.”

And I’m not sure I have that many people in my corner…

Posted in Work/writing life