“If your school finds out, you will get expelled”, those were the words of a loved one to a young, vulnerable me. That was the first thing he thought about, my grades, my school, my success… At that very same moment, I decided that it would be me, and only me against the world, and yet, I kept those words in me, like a doctrine. Failure was my fear, but little did I know, at the time, that the road to success was through failure. We live in a society where failing is unacceptable, where people grow up wishing that the seed of success will take off in them without really giving themselves a chance to experience—to know—what their very own definition of success is. So, people learn how to fail in silence and make their so-called successes loud, very loud, almost as if they screamed their perceived successes enough to start believing that that was success. The problem is that we have grown to think that there is a universal definition of success, but really there isn’t. Let me tell you about a little thing that I learned in class a few weeks ago, which helped me to understand how people view success. Economics is a very important component of our society, and although sometimes (or many times) we criticize its ramification in our governments, in the existence of capitalism or in the existence of wars, we very rarely try to understand the base on which economics stands. The foundation of our current economic systems lies in game theories and assumptions. These game theories assume that people have an infinite bank account, but here’s the thing, they don’t. This results in poor people becoming poorer and poorer while those who have “infinite” bank accounts, well, their bank accounts become more “infinite.” But that is not the only problem with using such theories as the foundations of our world. They assume that people are predators that always want to maximize, and the result is a world full of people that think they want to maximize because this is what society tells them from a very young age. In reality, though, people just want to be happy. The more I grow up, the more I realize that the line between success and happiness is very blurry in our world, and it is somehow shocking to me. This is what ingrains a feeling of dissatisfaction at the core of people’s lives, and pushes them to run after a prize that’s constantly running faster than them, and there’s no finish line. This might have simply been one person’s definition of success, a smart one, but still, just one, and it has become the base of our lives. There is one thing that has taken me a long time to understand and accept: there is nothing more painful than failure, but there is nothing else to make you think about your own definition of success. Once you do, it doesn’t mean that your journey is painless, it just means that it all becomes worth it. Small actions aren’t really insignificant, and, in fact, those are the ones that eventually can lead to your success. Nobody wishes for failure. If they do, then it is not a failure. Certain defeats cost a lot, sometimes too much, but this is the course of life. We do our best, but life takes and gives. The words success and happiness are not the same. Being happy means being successful, but being successful doesn’t necessarily mean being happy. And maybe that is where our problem lies, we confuse being successful with being happy. Failure is much more than a way to be happy (not that that is a small thing), it is a silent way to unite people. When a person fails, he or she comes to the realization that if they did, then a lot of other people did as well. Failure brings forgiveness and understanding upon our lives. People look at past experiences and see them with different eyes, and the truth is, once a person fails, their view on things will be forever different. It gives humans a certain humility needed to peacefully cohabitate. Thanks to failure, a really important phenomenon occurs: second chances. Second chances are almost considered a failure themselves, but the truth is, only very noble and open-hearted people have the bravery to give second chances. Giving someone a chance for redemption, to try to fix something that they thought unfixable is hard, very hard, but sometimes it’s worth it. All these failures give people an opportunity to think and eventually become the person that they aspire to be. We grow up watching Hollywood movies where failure is rarely fully portrayed. The main character always gets to the airport/bus station/train station before the girl leaves, and it all ends up with a happily ever after, but that’s not the case in real life. Sometimes we get there too late, or we never get there for many different reasons, but we have to learn that real life doesn’t always have a last minute quick fix. Some mistakes are just too big to be fixed or to be forgiven, but those are the ones that make us know the people that we really want to be. Failure is painful, and the damage it causes is ravaging, but with failure comes success. It is only when we fall low, to the very bottom, when we realize that we can go up just as far as we went down. This doesn’t mean that we don’t lose things we wanted, or people we loved, it just means that we are human. Just like we are given the opportunity to succeed, we should also be given the right to fail. This article was written by Ilham Farah. Send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: Fast Company