“Failure” Is All About Perspective
“Failure” is a word that can hold a large number of definitions depending on who you talk to. Since being laid off in December, I’ve certainly had days where I feel like I’ve amounted to nothing more than a failure in my life after working my way up to my dream job. But failure is all about perspective. And while whatever hardship you’re experiencing now may seem like the worst case scenario, it’s very often only a minor setback in the grand scheme of things.
Last night was one of those nights where I opened up the photos app on my iPhone out of boredom after realizing I wasn’t going to beat the latest game I’d set myself up against. I sat looking through these old photos of people I knew, places I’d been, and things I’d done when I stumbled across my entire catalog of vacation photos from Aspen, Colorado. The moment gave me pause. I was staring at a photo I’d taken of the Maroon Bells one afternoon in the fall of 2016. Two enormous stone behemoths sat before me at the time perpetually stuck pondering their reflection in the lake below, crested on either side by aspen trees beginning to change colors and alien to someone from the east coast — it the single most beautiful, humbling thing I’ve ever seen.
I realized in that moment, staring into the glowing rectangle before me, that even though my present situation might be a complete nightmare, it’s only a nightmare right now.
In Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, there are a race of extraterrestrials called Tralfamadorians. They express a belief that all time is fixed. What has happened in the past will always happen. What is yet to happen will always happen. And what is happening in the present, with every passing second, is always going to happen. And while it can be easy to assume that you’re at rock bottom when things don’t go your way, it’s all too easy to take the greater context of your situation for granted. Rock bottom can look a lot different depending on who you are, and it took that photo of two peaks overlooking a crystal-clear lake to make me realize that. While things aren’t ideal, I can still look to this picture and say that I’ve at least never been shy about following my dreams.
Sure, I may be unemployed with few current prospects, but hey — I was a writer. Professionally. For a whole year! I got a real crack at my dream job through sheer effort. That’s nothing to balk at. Two years ago, I never thought I’d have gotten a chance to do that. Or actually travel out west. Or live in a big city. Any of that. I’ve come a long way.
That’s how I know I’m not at the bottom — that I haven’t failed. This is only a momentary setback. There are more mountains to see, more words to write, and more goals to set.
