Trying is Not Failure
(written 55 days ago) 111 no comments
The other day I was talking to Iris. And I had said something that had made her sad. She was talking about a project she wanted to do, and I was feeling a little discouraged. I pointed out that it was something that probably would not get completed and would end up failing. Later that day, Iris came to me and told me that I really had hurt her feelings. I could tell on her face that she was really hurting. I asked her what was wrong, and she pointed out that I had called her a failure. We then discussed it, and I had an "aha moment," or what some would call maybe a life-changing event.
All my life, from when I was a little troll trying to learn how to navigate the reeds in life, I was told that if you start something and you don't finish it, then you failed at it. But what if that belief is false? Like slowing down and enjoying the journey, what if starting the project is the journey? The journey may not have ever been to complete the project. What if starting something wasn't always to finish it? If finishing doesn't determine whether I succeeded or failed, what does?
If I were to make a list of all of the things that I started and never finished, that list would be one long list of failures. But what if that list is not a list of what I have failed at but a list of things I tried, gained experience from, and enjoyed starting. Why is it a failure if you start something, figure out you don't like it as much as you thought you would, and put it back on the shelf? What if just trying it, exploring it, and learning that you don't like it was enough?
I have started a lot of collections, hobbies, and the like. I can't tell you how many websites I have started over the years, enjoyed for months or years, and got tired of and let them go to the internet graveyard. I have had websites on photography, patriotism, local blogs, emergency prep, beekeeping, and so many more. There are so many books that I started to read, lost interest in, and put down. Were they failures? No, I enjoyed them at the time and learned from them. Looking at things that way makes my life look like a bunch of little successes, not a bunch of little failures. This makes me happy.
Instead of looking at yourself as a failure when you start a project that never gets finished, look at it as if you were brave enough to try something new, learned from it, and then decided you wandered far enough down that trail. Not every trail needs to be walked to the end. (There is a reason a half marathon has its own finish line.) That is not a failure. Unfinished does not automatically mean failed!
Unfinished Projects That Were Not Failures
I am apparently in pretty good company when it comes to unfinished projects. J.R.R. Tolkien left behind stories of Middle-earth that he never finished. His son Christopher later gathered some of them into a book with the wonderfully appropriate title Unfinished Tales. Charles Dickens died before finishing The Mystery of Edwin Drood. More than 150 years later, people are still reading it and wondering how the story was supposed to end. Neither work reached the finish line its author intended, yet both still wandered out into the world and gave people something. Maybe unfinished and failed aren't the same thing after all.
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