What is failure?
This is one question that has uncomfortably resided in my mind ever since the
word first reached my ears. That failure cannot be singularly defined is often
the potential answer; but one that I feel is a garb over our insecurity as an
individual in a particular social setup. The fear to fall is actually the fear
to bear the consequences of that fall. If we viewed falling as leading to
better self-realization, it wouldn’t be such a dreaded thing. Or even if
falling was considered as a ‘natural’ procedural experience that every person
ought to have in order to ‘grow’. But these are beliefs that we might have when
we are old enough to form our own ideas as ‘thinking’ individuals.
When we start
our rendezvous with the world, we are prepared to ‘survive’ in this ‘big bad
world’. We are imparted knowledge that helps us make space for our being in this
supremely complex and competitive world. We are told about probable challenges
that the world may throw at us. We are taught how to avoid paths that may lead
us to be failures. Failures in the ways of the world. Failures in the sense of
the society. Failures in the realm of a religion. Failures as recipients of socialisation.
Failures as participants in the polity. Therefore
the definition of failure that we have is, in reality, in context of our
society, our community, our nation, our world.
Then, when do we
fail as individuals in our own right? When does that ‘sovereign individual’
fail? When does that person, and not the citizen, fail? Is it when one fails
the norms of living that one may have set for oneself? Or is it when one cannot
distinguish between one’s values, morals, ideals and actions as a member of a
community and as an individual within an impregnable sphere of autonomy? Or is
it when one does not live up to the standards of behaviour that constitute one’s
personhood? Or is it when one goes with the flow….directed by external forces,
devoid of internal agency….without presiding over the principles that shall
govern the evaluation of one’s own failure (or success!)? After all one can
choose to fail….or not to fail!
