The power of failure

Failure gets a bad rap. Each time. Have you ever wondered why we, singularly as well as collectively, deride failure the way we do? Why do we only respect success? Is it humanly possible to be successful always? Is perennial success sought after because of the belief that it transforms man into superman?

All my life I believed it was important to be successful, to make money, to get for myself all those things that I did not have as a child.  By that scale I was not unsuccessful. Things changed drastically years later when I first heard my son's diagnosis. When autism entered my life, I felt like I had failed spectacularly – as a mother, as a woman, as a human being. All my banked insecurities roared into life in the form of a fierce fire that burned every ounce of confidence from my very soul.

I have had more failures than successes and my husband’s chequered career too lays testimony to the same truth. Having said this, I now say that each of my failures have taught me something so invaluable that today, as of now, I totally rock.

I have been through hell and survived. Each day still holds challenges that could break the backs of most but I get up and face them. When I failed to find a school for my son, I started one. When I failed to create a career for myself, I tried many and enjoyed them all. I have been an engineer, a  writer, a columnist, a teacher, a fundraiser, a translator - and I still run my house and make dinners that my children are excited to eat. I don’t think I would’ve learnt these many things or tried so many options if I had a regular successful life. So I am grateful for having failed. I wish I had started teaching my children the importance of failing when they were very little but at least now I tell them about it.

Respect failure. Don't fear it. Take it in your stride. Don’t equate yourself with your worst failure. Equate yourself with the strength you have shown in picking yourself up and moving on. No one ever walked the first time they tried. No one ever learnt to ride a bike without falling off at least once. No one ever got through life without one single instance of failure because no one can be good at everything they try.

Recently when I saw a lot of my friends on FB almost revelling in the failure of the Vikram lander even as the majority of Indians sat teary eyed watching the ISRO team frantically trying to re-establish connection with it, I felt terrible. Imagine the amount of effort behind such a mission. Imagine the number of people whose ingenuity helped the space program evolve into what it is today. Imagine the brilliance that designed a lunar orbiter plus lander at a cost that was a fraction of what other countries spend on such a program. And yet the failure of the lander was what was ridiculed. Not the success of the orbiter. Not the stellar work done.

It is only when we learn to respect failure as much as we idolise success that we acknowledge the power of learning. Without learning there is no evolving. So celebrate the failures and don’t put down those who try all their lives to do what others do not dare to do. They are the ones who make all the  difference.