Why We Must Fail

My friend, let’s call him Han, was a topper at school. He was one of the cool kids who were great at sports, academics, and stage performance. He was also one of the most good-looking guys with a charismatic personality. He would target anything and get that.

My other friend, let’s call him Din, was bullied by classmates. He struggled in some courses in college including failing in one. He had multiple breakups. After graduation, he took the time to find a job. He was even once laid off and was unemployed for over a year.

Din didn’t stop. He looked beyond his country of employment for opportunities. He took one for less salary but good prospect. He excelled and worked in much bigger companies. He found the love of his life and got married.

Han was destined for greatness. It was smooth sailing for him.

Then he had a breakup.

Han couldn’t handle that. He didn’t know how to handle loss or rejection. He stopped his life and took more than a month to get back to regular life.

When his mother passed away, he became distant. And unfortunately, he found solace in the sweet talks of criminals. He eventually went to jail for criminal activities.

Han couldn’t handle failures when life threw them at him. After years of success and getting what he wanted, he couldn’t cope with his first loss. We were surprised by his reaction. It took me years to understand why reacted that way.

I have learned from my own life that life keeps throwing curveballs at us. When this happened for the first time, I found it difficult to cope as well. I was an expert in areas where I was struggling. That took some getting used to and adjustments.

Over the years, I realized that when life introduces us to a difficult situation, we can do two things. We can get bogged down and blame everything. Or we can stay patient and learn from that experience.

Every bad experience has made me a better person.

Every struggle made me stronger for tomorrow.

The same happened to Din as well. His struggles helped him develop nerves of steel. He knew he was not going to get everything. And he was ok with that. He took what he got and that made him successful.

Both Din & Han had some similarities. Both of them were talented, intelligent people with a slight sense of superiority. They were hard-working in most cases. Both of them had a good future.

Yet they had different paths. One continued to excel while the other lost track. One persisted despite obstacles and the other reacted negatively whenever there was any struggle.

I believe the failures, heartbreaks, bullying made Din a stronger person. I also need to credit his uncanny ability to brush them aside and focus on his journey.

Let’s zoom out a little bit.

No one has a smooth life. Everyone will have to go through difficult periods. What we do during the bad times define us. How we adjust when our horizon looks cloudy makes us stronger.

We may need to keep our head down a little bit if we go through a bad experience. We need time to weather the storm. We need time to process what just happened. But we should not get bogged down. Once we process the initial trauma, we should look for a way forward.

It’s easier said than done. So many things can happen to derail us. We can take help from others and hope nothing unmanageable happens to us.

Our struggles widen our comfort zone. We may hate those moments. But we need to learn from them to become better people.

This was previously published in Medium