My little brother didn't get a summer job he interviewed for. He really wanted it. He kicked butt in his cover letter, and he was at his best in the interview, too. Afterward, he didn't want to talk about it, and I didn't know what to say. It's a weird thing, when you're like, "Give me more responsibility. I want to work all day instead of being a kid," and the world is like, "Too bad. You have to stay a kid."
I was worried he'd blame himself.
I'd really wanted him to get the job, because I really didn't want him to learn to stop trying. That's what happens sometimes after you get turned down enough. You throw up your hands and you say, "Whatever!" and whatever you decide to do next after that "whatever" is usually not anything worth remembering. It usually involves a lot of TV shows that you've already seen and weren't totally crazy about the first time but this time they feel a little more nuanced. Unless you have incredible fortitude of spirit, and honestly, I'm not even sure what that is. I may have just made it up.
I felt called to say something. So I sat my brother down, the way I thought a good big sister would, and I said, "Um, so, I thought that -- well, I wanted to talk to you about something," in my confident, charismatic way. He looked at me blankly. I said, "I want to talk to you about failing."
And then I told him about how, for over a year, when I started writing almost fulltime (although with two part time jobs to keep me making some money and feeling some legitimacy), I did nothing except for fail. I mean, in addition to working. I received a constant string of rejection letters, and that was when I was lucky. Most people I pitched ignored me completely. Even the bloggers I tried to form connections with often ignored me. I wasn't big enough, and I had no idea how to get there.
When I decided to be a writer, you know, as a real thing, I was about to enter a very dark period of total failure. I didn't know it then, but it would last for well over a year. Which is a long time to be totally failing. (Although, if you want to get technical, I'm probably still failing now, in plenty of ways.)
But there's a hopeful message here, I told my little brother, who was laughing at me a little, looking slightly confused.
That whole time that I was failing and being depressed and stuff, I kept on going, doing the thing that I knew I loved. I chose my thing. And I did it in my own way. And I kept doing it, with my teeth gritted and my fingers stuck to the keyboard. I kept writing until people read me. Until they told their friends. Until someone finally wanted to publish something I'd written. Until someone else did. It was not luck or magic or great/any connections, for what felt like forever. It was just me, doing it anyway. Resolute and miserable and fiercely determined and totally unprepared and earnest and helpless and tiny.
And if I can do it, Gabe, so can you. For sure. With all of your talent and your quick brain, and your brilliant wit and your natural ease with people. You can do it even better. I am this awkward, anxious, uncertain person. You make people laugh uproariously with one sentence.
If I can do it, it is definitely doable.
But I think it's better, when you begin, to know that you will fail. Not just a little, but constantly.
And I think that if you have even the smallest opportunity to do what you love anyway, you should take it. Because that's what makes it worthwhile. Doing something that you love for itself, and not for the things that it might or should or someday probably will get you.
So don't wait for someone to accept you. Do something you love anyway. I mean, keep sending in those applications, of course, but at the same time, if you possibly can, try to find a thing that you can work on just because you like the way it feels to get better at it. Just because you feel that you know yourself a little better the more you do it. Just because you are already pretty good at it. Chances are, it relates to your dream job anyway. Think of it as an investment in your future. And then, when you fail, keep going. That is absolutely the only way to get to success. And actually, I think it's a kind of success itself.
I told my little brother that when I think back over the things I've done (in my long and almost certainly esteemed 26 years of life), I am mostly proud of one thing: not giving up.
It's a pretty typical thing to be proud of. I'm not claiming to be original here.
But I will say this for myself: I have gotten a lot better at failing. I am no longer crushed by a rejection letter. I knock them back like tequila shots. Ooh, it burns for a second. Ahh.
(No, but really: I can't do shots, I'm a baby about them.)
I am thankful for little steps forward.
But most of all, I know something really important about myself: I am the kind of person who won't go away. Who won't shrug and leave. Who isn't going to shut up. Who ultimately believes that she has something to offer. Who is on this private mission to write things she finds worth writing, and who can't be stopped from writing them. Who, though tremblingly insecure at times, must still have this secret fortitude of spirit, because otherwise, why keep going?
That sounds like a person I'd like. Which is cool.
So that's what I wanted to say about failing. It's a great feeling, to know that you can fail and keep going. It's worth a lot of failing to get there. So go ahead and fail! Do it some more! Do it lavishly! Try everything you want to try! Put yourself on a path with a view you really like, and start walking and then -- just walk some more.
This post appeared originally on Eat the Damn Cake, where the writer often talks about beauty and food and some other stuff.
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"So each time the losses and deceptions of life teach us about impermanence, they bring us closer to the truth. When you fall from a great height, there is only one possible place to land: on the ground; the ground of truth. And if you have the understanding that comes from spiritual practice, then falling is in no way a disaster but the discovery of an inner refuge. Difficulties and obstacles, if properly understood and used, can often turn out to be an unexpected source of strength."
Sogyal Rinpoche
"Only after the majority of our aims and goals are reduced to ashes, do some remain to light the way toward love without self-satisfaction."
Kazimierz Dabrowski (obviously :)).
A similar thought is in the Bible, 1 Corinthians 3:13-15, and elsewhere.
Failure is how you learn to get better. A friend of mine was told she was #2 - among 40+ candidates, for a position she interviewed for, so she asked, "What would've made me #1?" I don't remember what she said the answer was - the other person was bilingual, maybe, or something that was totally out of her power to change at that time, but something she *could* address for the future.
Great pep talk, big sis.
No, I didn't get into the Ivy League College I applied to. Two marriages failed.
But there is my delightful grandson and some dear friends in my life. I must have done something right.