Why do I want the experience of doing what I’m willing to fail at?
Hmm, well is ‘willing’ the right word here? Isn’t that in my comfort zone?
Shouldn’t I be doing what I’m not willing to fail at? When I do something that when ‘failure is not an option’, I either succeed, in which case I’ve expanded my comfort zone, or I fail, in which case I’ve still pushed myself hopefully past my comfort zones.
So is the trick to do things framed as ‘failure is not an option’ so I have to rise to the occasion in either case? (if there is even some level of determination in the action).
That’s why I perform better when there is a deadline. Something on the calendar. Like with the workshop on 6/19.
Contrarily, what if failure wasn’t even an option, and neither was success? There is only being. Like if those weren’t even words or concepts, what could we do?
Failure and success are begotten by results. They are results. Results are cause and effect. Cause and effect are only there because of time. So failure and success is only a concept because of time. If there was no time, then there cannot be a success or a failure.
In a single moment, there is no success or failure. Even in sport, when you win a match or game or championship, that’s with the assumption that you choose to believe society’s definitions of time. You can lose the game and still be a ‘success.’ And not just with moral(e) or with media. In that moment of loss, you can be a ‘success’ by giving gratitude for the ability to compete against and team and compete with your team.
So success, then, is a mental state. We choose to be successful. Or we choose to be failure. That’s if we are wanting to limit ourselves to this success-failure framework. So it’s up to us if we want to be one or the other.
But as I’ve seen across so many contexts, the answer to ‘or’ questions is usually both and neither. Parallel here between both → infinity and neither → 0. A decision is finite. Humans have infinite potential. But it has to be manifested finitely. That’s what decisions enable.
What that means though is that when a decision is made, every other possible decision was not made. So as humans, we are in a constant, perpetual paradoxical state.
I would argue, that simply by being human, we are a paradox. Our mere existence is a paradox.
You can choose to be a success or failure. So success or failure is finite.
Why limit ourselves to those?
Other people may judge us to one or the other but we can choose whichever state we want to be in. AND we can be neither.
These are word riddles and circles that cannot be expressed by words. They are above and beyond feelings as well. Such is the paradox of humanity. Being comfortable with paradox - now that’s something we can all work on.
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