Failing: A Lifestyle

"Variety is the spice of life." Let's talk about spices for a second: I know nothing about spices. So let's discuss variety. Variety is intimidating--there's such a large variety of variety that it can seem like there is infinite variety, but as far as I know variety is finite. Still, addressing all the possible varieties of variety would require a variety of blog posts (insert various drum riffs). We're narrowing down now to one type of variety that I consider myself fairly knowledgeable in: the variety of ways you can fail. Let me be clear: this post is not a self deprecating post. This is a sharing of my wealth of knowledge on a subject that I have a large amount of experience with, experience that grows in a linear pattern on a daily basis, and will hopefully provide some wizened advice that will help you cope with your own inevitable collection of failures. For example, just look back at what I have written so far. Almost everything before this point has almost nothing to do with what I'm going to talk about now. This whole paragraph is a poorly structured mash of irrelevant sentences. It's actually gone on longer than I thought it would so instead of talking about a variety of types of failures, I'll just be talking about one. This introduction has been a failure in itself. So, now that you know that I know what I'm talking about, here we go.

One common type of failure is what I like to call "the gradual failure." The gradual failure is a failure that builds up over a long interval of time because of your seemingly insignificant daily choices. Inevitably, one day you will be struck to the bone with the realization that yes, you failed, and you have lost some valuable weeks or months or years off of your life that you can never make up for because you decided not to commit to the daily grind that could have made you a better, more developed person. I won't be talking about the gradual failure because it's a very depressing concept. Instead, I will be talking about a personal specialty of mine--"the cringey failure." You can identify a cringey failure if you cringe (squinting eyes and a teeth bared grimace) whenever you recall the moment of embarrassment. If you're still having trouble classifying the CF, I'll provide an example for reference below.

In seventh grade, I thought I was super smart. I used the word "therefore" in math proofs. One day my friend asked me to join the scholastic bowl team, so I figured why not grace them with my presence (it turned out that in scholastic bowl you actually needed to know actual things. Needless to say, I was pretty bad). The team practiced twice a week and competed with other schools. One time, it was our school's turn to host the meet. We sat at a table on our auditorium stage, facing our opponents and excitedly making fun of our fellow teammates like seventh graders do (I however was busy showing the tall handsome sixth grader whom I was desperately in love with how cool I was). Soon the match started, and as usual I was of little help. But, suddenly, a shining opportunity presented itself. It came in the form of a math question--the moderator read a system of equations and told us to solve for variable Y. At that point in the scholastic bowl season I had pretty much no expectation of ever answering a math problem before our team's resident math genius, but as I looked at the equations which I'd written on the paper before me, I realized something amazing--I actually knew how to do this! Well, what the heck, I thought, and worked my way through the problem. Then something fairly incredible happened--I had found the answer. In awe, I looked around at all the heads which were still bent over their own furiously scribbling pencils. Could it be? Was I somehow, somehow the first one done? It was a miracle--it was a sign! I would answer this problem, and peoples' jaws would drop, and then I would ride a horse into the sunset in the arms of my strapping younger man.

Bzzzzz

I pressed my red buzzer button and people's pencils dropped in disbelief. "A3," acknowledged the moderator, and then all eyes were on me. A spotlight opened up from the heavens. Angels descended. My teammates gazed at me in wistful admiration, I'm sure. Glowing with pride, I gave my hallowed answer.

"X equals FOUR!"

There was a moment of silence. I waited expectantly for our ten points. Something like disbelief hung in the air. Then, finally, the moderator spoke. "I-I'm sorry, that's incorrect...," she said, stuttering slightly. "Uh....other team, you have one minute to answer." Incorrect? I thought. How was that possible? No, I was right! I looked pleadingly over at my best friend, and she shook her head sympathetically. The other team buzzed in. "Ahem....Y.....equals zero point three two seven." Y.....Y......Y.....The realization of what I had done hit me, and by the time it took my teammates to stop groaning I was already well underway in the process of dying of shame. I had given the answer for X when the question had asked for Y. No, my crush would not be professing his undying love for me. I'm pretty sure he face palmed.

So, there is a clear example of a cringey moment for you. I definitely do look back on this moment and cringe, but let me tell you, it doesn't even make it into my top five embarrassing highlights. But, those are too painful to discuss. My advice on how to cope with these unfortunate moments is to laugh so you don't cry. But really, if you do embarrass yourself as much as I do, your mind will adapt. At some point you'll force yourself to accept that no one really cares that much (except you of course). If anything, other people are grateful it's you who embarrassed yourself and not them who embarrassed themselves. So, you have actually made a whole bunch of people around you grateful for where they are in their lives. How cool is that?