ambivalence

It doesn’t rain but it pours. Lately, failure has been staring at me in the face not just once or twice but a whole endless string of it. It taunts me to cling on while it threatens to release me from its grip. I have coasted through my life and averted failure for as long as I can remember now but it doesn’t get any easier from here. Even though a life that offers no hardship and challenges is not as enriching as one that offers a fair balance of success and failure, I very much hope to be absolutely unfettered by the looming clutches of failure.

I am driven to exasperation and to the extent that I think giving up would free me from days of incessant worries. It’s interestingly germane and timely that I watched Lions for Lambs amid all my troubles, in which Robert Radford’s character seem to be speaking to me, as to many others who are facing similar stressful predicaments — It is better to try and fail, rather than failing to try (although you’d eventually arrive at the same position, but at least you tried). And in an episode of Family Guy, Brian (the talking dog character), was clearly overjoyed upon crossing an academic hurdle although he failed. He claimed that at least “he did it”. So what’s all this? Am I foreshadowing my own outcome? And yet, even when I’m inclined to think that a higher probability of failure than success awaits me at the end of this arduous journey, I’m still tenaciously persisting on, as if betting on the elusive flicker of hope that cheers me on.

Sometimes I wonder if the struggle is worth the effort if failure still holds victory over my hard work. I lamented that it’d be such a waste if I should drop what I earned so far, and I was advised not to view all these as a wasted journey (if failure reigns) but instead to treat my efforts as a contribution to my overall journey in life.

A question reverberates in my ears - What’s the worst that can happen? Life is after all just as a main course with success and failure as side dishes. What’s for dessert?