The world needs your failures
Entra aquí para la versión en español.
If Disney doesn’t imprint it in us, our parents and/or teachers do: “you can do anything you set your mind to… you’re the future.” After all, they know there’s no harm in inspiring the new generations. There’s basically two possible outcomes:
- Sooner rather than later “life” casts its shadows in the magical rainbow road that connects reality with fantasy with no other explanation apart from hope. Or maybe
- Their words become the lottery ticket and, surprisingly, they actually get to see the product of their implanted optimism in an innocent and fertile soul.
Anyways, it’s usually harmless to cheer.
We all grew at least knowing that mindset in others, but the roads that follow are nevertheless very diverse. While some lose hope forever when puberty depression strikes, others are walking the first steps towards Mars’s colonization. When do we part ways that drastically? I’ll talk about inflection points.
My perspective
Yes, I’m a Disney fan, but I’ve never considered myself an idealist. While I liked the idea of aiming at marriage with the girl I liked at 12, I also audited my feeling almost on a monthly basis. I weighted if she would really be the one, or if it was better to call the relationship off. I know, right? In Disney’s defense, this is more on my parents. The thing is I always liked to mix both my emotional and rational self, to avoid loosing on the benefits of either.
So I started growing and —as many and even inside my blessed life — I became aware of some flaws in the system. Teachers painted a very colorful picture of corruption in the government; insecurity rose to worrying levels in what should’ve been my most socially active age; I saw cheating was as common for some as eating cereal was for me; I knew deceit and treason in my friends; among many other things you’d never tell a 5 y/o in fear of breaking his/her spirit. And realizing these examples where neverending, I understood the absorption of all of this information and inputs become a daily activity from there on. This is where I start to expect the worst. I tried to have hopes in the best case scenarios, but without losing sight of the worst. This way I could have a sort of preventive anesthesia, in case more disappointments emerged.
Without me noticing, this became instinctive in me, to the extend of forming part of everything in my life. I started suppressing the butterflies in the stomach on fist dates, in case everything went sideways; I preferred to imagine me losing a certain contest, just in case; and I thought of screwing the interview, in case I didn’t get the job. Not only did I lack hope, I feared it.
Inflection points
I’ve realize that it’s in situations like the one I was in that in many cases — maybe all — , we reach one or a few inflection points as we become saturated with this amount of new data. You can identify these in sentences like:
- “… and that’s when I stopped trusting men and love”.
- “… and that’s why I stopped voting”.
- “… and when they did that to me, I understood I couldn’t see for anyone other than myself”.
- “… and I realized religion was a scam I wasn’t going to participate in no more”.
Any of these sound familiar? Is this starting to make sense?
My examples are missing something key. Probably just a few of you read them and thought “hey, what about the Mars colonizers?”. This precisely the point I want to get to. Although it may be less promoted, I think it’s pretty common for people to search to counterstrike negativity instead of giving into it. Many just can’t take it anymore and say: “Enough! Earth isn’t enough for human kind, lets get to Mars…”. And that’s how Elon Musk brings that sci-fi dream closer to our hands. Despite this, we perceive that most tend to stick to the status quo, because we create a vicious cycle of inter-validation of our attitudes. As soon as we decide to give in to the weight, we go and talk with someone to relieve the guilt.
As context, in mathematics inflection points tend to have basically two behaviours:
- They change the concavity of the curve from concave to convex.
2. They change the concavity from convex to concave:
Some teachers teach the concavity concept as a glass that “drops water (concave)/holds water (convex)”.
Linking that analogy to this entry: I believe the natural — ergo simple — thing to do is to stop holding the water, give in to its weight and drop it and let it slip on us, disregarding where it lands. On the other hand, getting sick of letting water slip on us and deciding to load, contain and construct an individual and social benefit with it, is counter-intuitive. As the the movie states: “either you die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain”. We’re used to think of change as impossible, to strongly justify why it would be a waste of time to try. We feed on it, and it makes total sense to us, because that’s how we anesthetize the pain of our frustration of seeing where our society is headed and thinking there’s nothing we can do. “We’re doomed anyways”.
What am I saying?
I’m not asking you to be the way I think is right. I’m not asking you to vote and join a religion, nor am I saying you shouldn’t either. I’m saying stop fearing hope. I’m saying stop fearing being yourselves. Stop fearing to try and fail, because you will anyways more than once. But it’s better to fail being yourself than failing to stop. Allow yourself to be you, because you know that’s what you want. Aspire to ambitious goals, and start working on them. Lately I love saying: the only thing forbidden is to stay still.
Even Mark Zuckerberg said in his Harvard speech he didn’t feel like these great programmers and entrepreneurs when he started Facebook, and he’s not alone in that mindset. Many other entrepreneurs say the exact same thing. I know, “but he is Mark Zuckerberg”…”but he’s Steve Jobs”. Yup, and you are yourself! You don’t need nothing more. Millions like Jobs and Zuckerberg failed, and millions more will. But our society NEEDS those millions of attempts of being authentic human beings who try to make things better. We need those who act how they think, but feel before they think; those who prefer being hurt than hurt the innocent; those who live and care for the community. Because those are the ones that create a momentum of improvement, which help both the community and them grow.
Can we achieve anything we set our minds to? Yes. But that doesn’t grant we will. But if you let me choose between the pain of carrying a load with a transcendent purpose and the pain of being part of the load, I choose the first one anyday.
Love,
Santi.
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To know more about the author’s intentions with his entries, read the first entry: What is the intention of this blog?
