This week we're writing about a challenge or failure that doesn't have a resolution. Well, the bad news is that's my biggest fear. But the good news is that fear is pretty unrealistic and I've faced it already. Every failure or challenge has a resolution, it just may not be the one you want or can think of.
Immediately my mind went to losing someone, failing to protect them when it is simply unrealistic that you can constantly protect everything you love from anything that could hurt them all at once, all the time. Okay really though, so that we're all on the same page here, I'm talking about parenting - the grandest challenge I've ever faced.
My kids are 6 and 8 so I'm really out of the thick of it now but oh boy was it thick. And just because I made it out of those insane toddler years doesn't mean the challenges don't keep coming. I mean I'm faced with a new one almost every second of every day (my youngest is particularly testy). But it's a challenge that will never fully have a real resolve because it's not something static. Even after I'm dead and gone, they will continue to grow and change and face new dangers and challenges of their own every day. All I can do is take things one day at a time (let's be real it's more like one minute at a time), do my best and then do it all over again tomorrow with a plan to try harder and do better. It's the same in grief. When you lose someone, the pain is never truly gone, you just learn to live with it, to live without them, one day at time.
So, is there really freedom in failure? Well yeah absolutely, but what about when it comes to this context? My first reaction is to want to say no. This thing, this challenge is so important, you're shaping the existence of another freaking human, I mean why isn't there some sort of licensing or requirement for this stuff? But it's almost comforting that there isn't a handbook, that everyone is gloriously failing together all at once and learning from it. I mean when I make a mistake the whole family learns from it, trust me.
There's a sense of emotionally masochistic raw beauty in failure. That the only way to succeed is to have a pretty intimate relationship with failing. So I'll leave you with this: fail, fail often, fail big, fail gloriously, and fail forward because we're all just floating on a small rock through space. What have you really got to lose except to gain?
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