Failure, Love, and Lessons Learned (from Miami)

You never know where you’re going to wind up in this world. Sure, a picture is projected in your mind and you do your best to move towards it, but life is more like a painting you’ll never finish. You try to make it like the picture in your mind, but it always comes out a little different. Maybe your brush strokes are a bit funny. Perhaps the mountain you thought you’d build turns out to be more of a hill. 

You often look at the painting and wonder where the hell it’s going. Sometimes it feels like you should just start over, but then you remember how hard it was to make something. You see the empty spaces and remember it all started from nothing; and no matter how it looks, it really is something. It’s your something.

Its got its jagged edges and blotched lines, but in some places it paints perfect. How did you do that? Between the blunders you’ve struck some things so right, and you begin to see the beauty in the blotches. You laugh at the jagged edges that used to stab at your eyes. You realize they were never meant to hurt you. It was always just part of your design. 

And so you paint. You keep painting because it’s the only thing that will set you free. 

I’ve realized a lot over the last couple years. Maybe more important than anything is the lesson of letting go. That constant act of aiming towards something and accepting where I end up has often been hard to grasp, but I think I’ve developed a pretty good handle on it. 

I think we often put ourselves in a box by trying to define what we are. Instead of saying “I do comedy” or “I go to work at the hospital sometimes,” we say “I’m a comedian” or “I’m a doctor.” It’s easy to become the work instead of doing or creating it. I think the real job is the work we do every day to develop our personality. That’s what we really are, and that’s what matters.

I know I’m not alone when I say I’ve spent too much time trying to latch my happiness onto achievements. It obviously feels good to achieve something and we should all work to be the best we can at whatever it is we’re doing, but if we let our entire sense of satisfaction hinge on our pursuits, we fall mercy to our failures as much as our success. 

I think we have to be grounded in pride for the personalities we’ve cultivated. Knowing you’ve done right by yourself and others gets us through the failures and takes pressure away from feeling like we constantly have to achieve success in our careers in order to be worthy.

Failure has taught me a lot. It’s taught me how to be loved; not for what I’ve done but for who I am. I realized that I never truly let anyone love me because I was always so focused on my next achievement. I felt I could only be worthy if I accomplished something great and I lost out on a lot of connection because of it. Here were all these people who liked me or loved me for who I am and I put up a wall because I thought I had to earn it.

It wasn’t until I failed again and again when I found the love was always pouring in. I didn’t understand it at first. I just thought I was cursed. Why did I come down with a debilitating illness at the height of my golfing prowess, when I was shooting in the 60s at 16? I put in so much work. Why could I read everyone’s hand at the poker table and still lose on a 5% chance over and over? I studied so hard. Why don’t any publishers want my book? I dedicated my life to it. 

I thought all these things were failures, but a failure is really just a lesson learned. It’s making sense to me, now. If I had been “successful” at any of these things I would have been caught up in conditional love and God only knows how that could have spiraled.
I can do without the pseudo-love. I don’t need praise because I’ve found purpose in the day-to-day connections I’ve learned to make. Satisfying strangers and chasing their approval is a wicked game, and I don’t want to play. I’ll write my poems, I’ll tell my jokes, and whatever happens I’ll ride the wave.

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