I hope you fail

I hope you fail miserably. I hope you have a hard time. I hope things don’t go your way. Most importantly, I hope that nobody steps in to “save” you.

My life is my journey and nobody can walk it for me. There is no warning of all the potholes along the way. I wouldn’t have listened even if they tried. No, I needed to fail. I needed for people to bully me, make me an outcast. I needed a little neglect now and then to remind me that I am not the center of the universe. I need reminders from my wife that I am “not that important” and that my perspective, no matter how educated, isn’t the only “right” one.

I have failed and I hope you do to. I hope you go through some of the most difficult-to-comprehend life events, for without those opportunities you will never grow.

Damn it life can suck sometimes. Just like when I was a kid and wanted to do what I thought best but my loving parents said “no.” It doesn’t matter if their intent was to keep me safe or simply saying “no” due to inconvenience, either way it taught me some of my most valuable lessons in life. It taught me how to cope. It taught me how to comfort myself, it taught me how to accept.

Life is going to be unfair. That’s awesome. If it was fair, the boredom alone would drive people to chaos. I hope children accept this most-certain fact early on. Life doesn’t care about your this or that, instead it keeps moving. The world keeps spinning and you are left to pick yourself back up no matter what caused you to get down. It is your choice as to what situations are. Are they opportunities, trainings to  be better, or are they purposely out to make your life miserable?

Failure is the only way to success. Though we might all feel like we know what is best in our life, we don’t. God gives us what we need not what we want. If I would have won the $700 million jackpot recently awarded, I’d be dead in a few years. Miserable due to getting everything I’d ever materially wanted and left to realize those things don’t make me happy. That plus the inauthentic people coming out of the woodwork for their piece of the pie. Faking the niceties would have killed me alone.

Anything in this world; idea, achievement, praise, etc. isn’t what you are striving for. The journey makes the destination worthwhile, blah blah blah. Some of the best things in life come from what we learn from past, failures. The people who grew strong and picked themselves up when they were pushed down, are the ones who are successful.

Like any movie you’ve ever seen where the hero has grit, they failed. Like any athlete whose shoes you’d pay $200 for, they failed too. Like the writers whom thousands of hard-earned pages went into the garbage, they failed. Large amounts of time and effort as a failure for the one moment to be a success. Those failures are not wasted amounts of time, they are practice. If you succeeded right out of the gate, you’d never have appreciated the victory.

So, again, I hope you and those you love, fail. For this is the best thing that could ever happen to you.

Sincerely,

A failure