That Thing

The only thing you’ve ever failed was someone else’s expectations. Their lack of patience. Failure is a decision, not a reality. By definition, failure is miraculous, because it exists and yet there is no scientific evidence to authenticate its existence. Some people carry quitting with them every step of the way, any time of day, and these people want failure to be real, because of what it conceals. 

We claim to disdain failure, we hate it on its surface, but it only exists because of our choice, therefore, the public perception of failure is almost the exact opposite of its reality. Failing, being a failure, enables such laziness, such regressions into sloppy, simple, comfortable neglect of the pursuit of destiny. Without failure, there’d be no permission to give up on the mission, you’d never stop until the job was done no matter how long it took. Failure lets you off the hook. Failing closes the book for you, so you don’t have to call it by its real name, the one with physical evidence of its existence. Quitting. 

If you only ever wanted the job to be done, then quitting essentially creates the same result as finishing, based on your own initial expectations. You’ll consider quitting and get the same sense of elysian relief that no matter how it ended, it ended, it’s over, and by saying that you failed instead of quit, it can be over forever. And school is one of the only places that can give a student that kind of eternal satisfaction. 

Congratulations. 

You failed your own education. 

The closure, the finality of failure.

The sense of peace you get 

when a system takes responsibility 

for that thing you quit.