Failure is not a stage on the path to success.

Fail early, fail often, fail regularly. Behind every great success is a whole boatload of failures. Failure just means that you’re trying. It doesn’t really matter.

Eventually you’ll start failing on whole new levels, and that these failures will look like success to the person you are now. Every tweet, every Tik-Tok, every YouTube video you make is another bet on yourself. A hedge against the mediocre, the average. Make enough bets and, eventually, what’s yours will come due.

That’s the message about failure that our culture steeps us in.

Looking around our society you’d be forgiven for thinking that the path to success was absolutely through failure. And through failure, on the other side, a kind of spiritual fulfilment.

You can see it in the stories that our ideas of success tell about themselves. The entrepaneurs who failed in their initial businesses, the lovers who dated and dated and dated until they finally found a match. The writers who wrote and wrote and submitted and submitted and wouldn’t take not for an answer, until finally they were recognised.

Even Samuel Beckett, high poet of failure, did eventually succeed. His plays were staged worldwide, his novels read today, he was awarded the Nobel prize. Although, with taciturn pessimism, he described getting the Nobel as a disaster, and gave all the prize money away.

Deep in the stories we tell, is the idea that failure, real deep lacerating failure, is a just stage on the route to something else.

Basically every other story — every movie, novel, TV show — follows the hero’s journey. This is where we meet a flawed (but likeable) protagonist whose every perception the story is filtered through.

They set off on a quest — to convince someone to love them, to find a magic elixir — but face obstacles. Some they overcome. They slay a dragon, for instance. Or they sneak past it. Eventually their wit, or bravery, or cunning proves no good. They face a ‘dark night of the soul’ at the end of Act II.

Here in a spiritual crucible their flaw is resolved. This spurns the hero on to re-contextualise their quest, find the courage to face their nemesis, and ultimately succeed.

So you’d be forgiven for trying the very best to fail as quick as possible at any endeavour you set yourself. No matter, because there’s always something else you can try. Some other route to success. Failure is no big matter at all.

Except I don’t think it’s possible at all.

There’s two implied assumptions buried in this story: that there is something beyond failure, and that success will bring you fulfilment. Through bitter experience, I don’t really believe either is true.

Firstly, by pretty any standard I’m a terrible failure.

I’m mediocre at my job, have few friends, have spent four years in a country and still don’t speak the language all that well. My Father never calls, nor does my brother. When my mother calls, all she does is tell me what everyone else is doing.

I’ve never been in a proper relationship, and haven’t been on a date in 6 months. I have about 3 friends, and one of them lives in another country. My PhD failed to generate many academic papers, and there’s nowhere to go in my career that isn’t sideways, or into a whole different patch of grass.

And that’s just the things I can think of right now. Beyond these failures? Well, more failures. I learned lessons from them all, but the next quest, or next challenge proved different, and the learnings unaplicable.

And we’ll never get back what we put in: our lives.When I was young, this was not how I assumed my life would turn out. I was tall, handsome, and funny. I had good grades, and played music all the time. I had impeccable teeth. Of course I was going to be a success. Why do you even ask?

But the end terminus of my life is failure.

And it’ll be yours too. You will die, your family will eventually forget you (what do you really know about your great-grandparents?) and then eventually your gravestone will wear down and even your name will be erased from the world.

Failure is the default mode of life. Most businesses fail. So do half of all marriages. Most novels are terrible, and that’s the published ones. Your career is likely to end in middle management, not in the executive suite. And you’ll likely never travel to Japan.

There is only so much time. We have to commit to somewhere, something, somebody.

And it might not work out.

Failure is a big thing indeed.

It’s interesting how little we talk about this. Collectively we refuse to acknowledge it. For most of us, we’ll not amount to much, and there’s nothing beyond that.

Wouldn’t it be nice, we fantasise, to be a success?

Probably not.

For those of us who are a success, we find that everything we thought was on the other side never materialsied. We never found the love, the adoration, the stability, or the power we craved.

Madonna was once a pop music titan unlike anything since; now she has plastic surgery. That’s not the mark of someone who loves herself.

You get married, but to the wrong person. Once purchased, your house is a prison, not an asset. And you never resolve your flaws, not even with all the therapy you can afford. You emigrate, but can’t speak the language. Your boss won’t meet you and the stress causes your gums to recede from your impeccable teeth.

One morning there’s blood in your mouth after you brush your teeth, and in the stress of it all you’ve gained ten kilos and you just don’t have the energy to exercise it away.

Your quest remains uncompleted. The princess forever locked in her castle. There’s no Act III in your life. There is no eschaton you will immense. There is only another unfinished story waiting ahead.

You’ve got to find a way to extend love to you mediocre selves.

You have to love yourself warts and all.