How It Feels to Be Failure Me

Failure.

Countless hours of studying, countless sleepless nights, wanting to be the best I can be but I just can’t seem to get it right. My favorite subject was Chemistry but to no avail, it ended me. If that statement shows ambiguity, let me rephrase: I passed with a C. Study sessions, late night frustrations, after-school tutoring, fighting the “dropping-out” temptations. Sometimes I hate the view. The view of the test answers I never knew. You would think after all this time something would click and my brain would stop thinking that every easy question is a trick.

It gets tiring after awhile-always losing. As opposed to those always winning you see, they also say, “it gets tiring after awhile.” It fascinates me; how we can never be satisfied with the things we have and the titles we obtain. How something new becomes something old and how we see a sunset as just another sunset like it’s not like we won’t see another one tomorrow; how a seedling is just another seedling until it sprouts into something more than it ever was-a tree. But we cut down trees because of the demand for more paper since in our minds, there’s never enough of this beautiful thing called “money.” And how something over time, such as winning, becomes tiring.

I used to think of myself as a seedling once; thinking that one day I wouldn’t be this outlier who lingered just outside the group of people that knew what they were doing. Unfortunately, that notion has long ceased. The thought about how all I really needed was a little water here and there; I was wrong. If I were a seed, my seed would need a whole team of gardeners that were made up teachers and tutors and instructors all breathing down my neck telling me the answers are all common sense, but inside I’m thinking, “more like incompetence.” Like a dog, I too would get rewarded for the things I could be taught, but trust me when I say that wasn’t a lot. My reward would have been water and I’m surprised I never heard I’m a mistake for a daughter when my seed never grew. I’m one of the very few but the best thing about me is that at least I tried.

At least I tried to participate in class when my teachers only ever always said, “There is no such thing as stupid questions.” Well, I proved them wrong, but not as an attempt to be declared class clown, but by asking the question of how an answer can be found even though they had just gotten done telling me; I promise every second I was listening. What will my failures make of me? A success is what a failure means to be.

Successful.

Switching from the negative connotation of things, I would in no way describe triumph as “the absence of failure” but instead the uplift from it. In the same sense as what’s love without pain, what’s success without failure? Failure, a word no one would ever use to describe me but myself so I surmise I just define failing differently then. Truth is, though I’ve never failed a class, getting that C in chemistry felt like failing. C’s to me are like the participation medals little kids get at science fairs. In highschool, to me it’s just a letter of recognition for paying attention and getting the work done but not being proficient enough to be anything higher than C average. Perhaps I just didn’t answer enough questions wrong because would it not suffice to say that when you answer a question incorrectly, you’re more likely to remember it better? Therefore would it be wrong to think that failure just may be the key ingredient to success?

I ask you to consider these questions carefully in such a way as I have. Know that the world is broad and made up of a numerous amount of other subjects that do not compare to the main four we focus on in school. These four consist of math, science, history, and english. I understand why they are what they are-our focus-but can it not cloud the fact that what we may lack in one subject, we make up for in others?

I for one play the piano. I compose music and just this year, I won the Holocaust Arts Contest for my piano composition. It took me 6 months to complete and perfecting it wasn’t easy. But I kid you not that when it came time to perform, my fingers went exactly where I wanted them to go exactly when I wanted them to. And it’s because of the intensity and dexterity of my music that I was able to convey the audience to a certain state of their mind and because of that I felt successful. I learned that success is not in knowing all the answers to a test, though it may be to others, but instead it’s in knowing what you did wrong and what you need to do to fix it. Failure isn’t always a negative connotation, sometimes it’s just an inevitable challenge we all have to face sooner or later if we want to be more than a seed ever was above ground. Being planted is one thing, but being watered is another.

Let your seed grow.