Learning to Love Failure

Keep enjoying, keep sharing, keep growing through,
The ups and the downs, the lefts and the rights,
The winning, the losing, the honourable draws,
Loving the failure that allows us to live,
Loving it like our nature loves us,
For this word is too fickle to be set in stone,
Too subjective to be meaningful,
Too lame to stop us walking upright and free,
We do not know nor can we judge what is success or failure,
For our eyes are clumsy and crude,
Just short of reptilian blind,
When we say
'Look at how I am failing',
'Look at how I am succeeding'
Someone smiles and dreams a silent dream,
Shines a silent light,
But a light so bright it will burn these medals to a crumbling dust,
Transforming our fear of failure into a shower of love,
Forgiving our forgetfulness and our lack of faith,
As all this and more recedes in the presence of the unfailing truth.

(I have just received some feedback from a conference presentation that is not what I wanted it to be. Part of me feels that I have failed. I know that there are many responses and reactions I could now have to this situation. This poem captures such a moment - the 'down', the 'losing', the 'fickle', the 'subjective', the 'judgement'. The feedback could lay me 'lame' i.e. it could tempt me to withdraw, recede and lick my wounds. It could tempt me into denial and I just plough on regardless, insensitive and cold. Or I could just sit here with this feeling and wait for it to pass, wait for the 'someone' that 'smiles', the 'light' that 'burns'. I could recognise that a life fully lived must include and embrace these moments in order to be a life fully lived. For without the feeling of this moment, I will not be able to experience the feeling of the other moments - the 'winning', the 'success', the 'ups', more 'judgement'. From this perspective, I am left with the ability to feel, to be human but not to be consumed by my feelings or be limited by humanity. I am left humbled by my successes and my failures as evidence of both the glory of human consciousness and its triviality in the scheme of things.)