Failure

Maybe it’s not as bad as we like to think: no melodramatic rendings, sackcloths, nothing so acute
as the fantasies of conscience chart in their uncontrollably self-punishing rigors and admonitions.
Less love, yes, but what was love: a febrile, restless, bothersome trembling to continue to possess
what one was only partly certain was worth wanting anyway, and if the reservoir of hope is depleted,
neither do distracting expectations interfere with these absorbing meditations on the frailties of chance.
A certain resonance might be all that lacks: the voice spinning out in darkness in an empty room.
The recompense is knowing that at last you’ve disconnected from the narratives that conditioned you
to want to be what you were never going to be, while here you are still this far from “the end.”


C.K. Williams

Here’s a bit of cold comfort – maybe failure isn’t so bad. It probably has its own recompenses, like the ability to give up trying to gain something that you suspected might not be worth having anyway, and the relaxation of being able to disconnect “from all the narratives that conditioned you to want to be what you were never going to be.”

I can see that. Boy, can I see it. I’ve done things just because I was “conditioned to want to be something I was never going to be.” The biggest example might be the years I spent trying to convince myself that I really loved academia.

Julie Neidlinger, who writes at Lone Prairie, has an interesting poem that looks at the same idea from another perspective -- inability to accept failure. What do I do when I "can't let go of what I never had"?

I know that concreteness and specificity are prized in poetry, but what I like about both these poems by two completely different kinds of poets is that they are so unspecific – you can imagine them talking about numberless kinds of failures and disappointments.

I also like them because they work well with several of Gretchen Rubin’s Secrets of Adulthood:

• You can choose what you do; you can't choose what you LIKE to do.
• You don't have to be good at everything.
• If you're not failing, you're not trying hard enough.

Finally, I need to apologize because I don't know how to make CK Williams' poem look right on Blogger. Those lines should be longer, running across the page in a loose-limbed, raggedy fashion.