Fearing the Wrong Thing

Don't Hesitate to Embrace the Possibility of Failure

At 55, I’m rapidly approaching the end of middle age and entering the period of an inevitable decline to the end. This isn’t a bad thing. Fortunately, I’m in excellent health, I’m still near the peak of my game, and the thirty-year-old athletes against whom I compete on the soccer field always think I’m in my forties until informed otherwise by my amused teammates.

But if there is one thing I have learned, it is that when we are young, we always fear the wrong things. Looking back, I can’t even remember the vast majority of times I was shot down by a young woman. With only a few exceptions, I don’t remember their names, I don’t remember their faces, and I certainly don’t remember feeling particularly bad at the time.

Do you know what I haven’t forgotten? The opportunities that I never pursued. The chances that I never took. The failures I “avoided” because I never took the shot. Believe it or not, it’s the non-failures that stick with you much longer than the failures.

Don’t wait for the right time. Don’t wait for the stars to align. Don’t worry about how it will look to others if things don’t go the way you’d like.

Every shot you don’t take is a miss. And worse, it’s a miss that might have been a make, if only you’d had the courage to take the shot.

So take the shot. Don’t wait, don’t hesitate. Just take the shot.

It might go in. It might not. Only one way to find out!

UPDATE: Deltas and Gammas absolutely must learn to stop trying to redefine reality in order to make it less uncomfortable for their fragile little self-images. The point of this post is ABSOLUTELY NOT that because one can learn from a failure, or because the failure might lead to a better outcome, the failure is not a failure.

And yet, it is. A failure is a fucking failure. You failed. You. Failed. You. Nobody else. Press F for you. So deal with it, accept it, and move on, you sensitive little low-status delusion boxes! Because if you insist on redefining your loss as a win, you are on the highway to Gamma pressing the turbo boost button.

The point is to not be afraid of failure. Being afraid of failure leads to failure in the form of inaction. And if you’re redefining failure as “learning” or “success” or “moral victory” or “secret king wins again,” you are not only afraid of failure, you’re also delusional.