Theodora Goss’s recent blog post Telling the Truthis an excellent and thought-provoking essay well worth a read: “And this got me thinking about all the things we don’t talk about,” she says. “There are so many of them!”I think a lot about all the things we don’t talk about. In fact, that was one of the reasons I wanted to start a blog, because I wanted to have a platform from which to speak about some of these things. But of course, I still carefully write around so many of these things of which we never speak.
I recently spoke to a friend of mine who revealed that he used to have crushes on girls starting in third grade. He had never told anyone else about this because he was embarrassed because he thought it was out of the ordinary. Can you imagine? I had crushes in elementary school, and some people in my classes even had “boyfriends” and “girlfriends” (although of course it meant something slightly different back then). But you know what? I never talked about my crushes. And apparently no one else talked about them to my friend either, so he’s spent all this time secretly thinking that he’s different, that something was wrong with him, because he failed to pick up the social cues that would have informed him that crushes aren’t so unusual after all.
I wonder how many things we are all secretly embarrassed about or ashamed of that are, in reality, very common. Only we never find this out because we’re all busy feeling like outsiders together.
I think many of us are ashamed of failure, like Dora says in her essay. I know I am, and being a perfectionist doesn’t help out with this. And yet, failure is essential for those of us with ambitious dreams. Most people don’t succeed with huge dreams right away. I listened to an interview with Seth Godin the other day in which he bemoaned how afraid so many people are of failure. This fear holds us back. It makes us unwilling to take the risks we need to take to learn, to grow, and to achieve something truly great. And yet, even though I understand the need for failure intellectually, it doesn’t take away the fear.
But on the other hand, the more I fail, the more I know that I am living an interesting and daring life. Failure is taking your life and seeing what you can wring from it instead of coasting along and choosing the safest route. Failure is pursuing lofty goals and pushing back against the fear. Failure is exposing yourself to the world and teaching yourself to believe in the you of possibilities instead of the you of limitations. Failure is the strength to believe in yourself so much that you can rise above your worries (or the reality) of what other people think about you.
The Practical Free Spirit 
Amen!
Thanks, Jeanne! Maybe I should make embracing failure my project for 2012. 🙂
Have I told you lately that I love you?
Yay, Amy love! I needed extra today due to some wretched virus.
I had to tweet and facebook this! (I just used facebook as a verb. Argh!) Great post, Amy! 🙂
First google was a verb, now facebook–what IS the world coming to?
Thanks so much for writing your very inspiring post.
I rarely feel much fear of failure. My own brand of perfectionism encourages me to assume that failure is inevitable because every action fails to be perfect. So if failure is inevitable it’s hard for me to feel fear because any choice–or even not acting at all–will fail. Being embarrassed / ashamed by failure, and worrying about it, on the other hand . . .
The other big one for me is depression and mental illness. People who live around or with mental illness all the time rarely even talk about it when they can do otherwise. And depression, of course, is such a depressing subject.
Not talking about these, however, encourages social problems. In fact I’d say the biggest social problems always derive from gaps in societies’ conversations. Sex, death and violence, depression, mental illness and failure are all issues in North America . . . and all the problems connected are made worse precisely because we don’t talk about them often enough. Good on you and Theodora for pointing some of the issues up.
So you’re afraid of the judgment implicit in failure rather than the failure in and of itself? I wonder if the result is the same….
Yes, talking about mental illness is a big no no. I’ve had other friends point out that same thing to me in the past. I’d like to think it’s gotten better, but… if it has, it sure doesn’t seem to have gotten THAT much better. Not yet, at least.
Failure can come with consequences other than just “feel bad”. And sometimes failure makes us feel bad for a long time; failing at college a decade ago – regardless of the circumstances, which are certainly clearer in retrospect – was personally devastating.
I think mental illness and depression are frequently avoided because there’s a stigma about them – not so much “you’re an outcast if you’re depressed/crazy” but the way they’ve been over-diagnosed and thrown around as an excuse sometimes makes many people these days very dismissive of them.
Mood and happiness go up and down. But how much depression is “normal” and “healthy”? I don’t know and good lucky getting anyone to talk about it.
Suicide is a topic nobody wants to talk about and carries such a stigma, at least in America.
Politics is becoming less and less a topic people can have actual conversation about. Oh they can (and some do) talk about it, but having calm serious discourse seems almost impossible unless everyone mostly agrees already – changing anyone’s mind seems almost impossible. The entrenchment and polarization creates apathy – more people who simply don’t care because they feel powerless to make anything better so they just ignore it all and have no knowledge or opinion.
Oh, it’s true. I don’t mean to embrace the kind of failure that puts yourself in danger, for example. But I do think that being able to reframe failure can be helpful in many instances–not to say there won’t still be pain associated with it and a recovery time involved, though, depending on the circumstance.
I found out earlier this year that more people die of suicide than homicide in the US each year, and I was surprised. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have been, but somehow (ha! because of the taboo on speaking about it) I’d never heard that statistic before.
It’s true. What we thought were unique with us turns out to be more common than we realize. Though when we try to hide it, we feel alone. When we share it, we become part of a one big family.
I love that last sentence of yours, Marilag. Sometimes, in the right circumstances, sharing can be what helps us to move forward through a problem.
Nah. There’s stuff I avoid blogging about or talking about in public because I have before and roundly gotten my ass handed to me on a platter by people who didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. For me, it’s best to stick to what’s ‘safe’ and avoid all the drama.
Well, I’ll agree with you that I dislike drama. But I guess for me some things are important enough for me to express that they are worth the potential drama (although I’d almost always prefer it if it remained “potential” and didn’t actually end up happening). Sometimes it can be a hard one to call.
I used to blog about not raising/not having custody of my boys. I used to blog about how miserable I was during both pregnancies, how horrific the c-section with the youngest was. I used to blog about a lot of deeply personal stuff and used to even go deeper and in more detail than I do currently about my faith. But the haters come out and give me hell and just won’t leave – thank the gods for the ‘block ip’ option, which I’ve learned to use to my benefit! The posts I’ve put up about Thomas’ kidney transplant failure over this past year have garnered a lot of support – but not from the people who raised him; they’ve dragged me through the proverbial mud (again, thank the gods for that block option). Speaking of, he has surgery this morning. I need to get to the hospital.
Ugh. I feel really lucky that so far, those commenting on my blog have been respectful and trying to actually communicate. I’ve heard so many stories of the opposite happening, though, and all those trolls are so often successful at suppressing voices and issues. And of course, why would any blogger *want* so much negativity in their lives? I really admire those who continue blogging anyway, but I must confess I don’t know what I will do if faced with a similar choice.
My thoughts will be with you and Thomas for the next few days…hope his surgery goes well.
You’re so blessed if you have actual communication happening! That’s a wonderful thing. 🙂 Thomas is back home. Everything went well. He goes back to clinic on Thursday morning.
So glad today went well! I’ll keep my good wishes going your way.
Thanks Amy!