Failure is only a turn in the road. So said a man I was anxious to get away from when he buttonholed me at a bus stop.
He had brought me through his views on various controversies, the story of his life and his philosophy. He ended with that statement.
A short time later I was watching a team walking off a football pitch, heads down because they had failed badly. It struck me that sport is there, not only to celebrate success but to ritualise the bitterness of failure.
And failure is bitter. If my man at the bus stop had wandered up to them to declare that “failure is only a turn in the road” he would have been given short shrift.
In the Irish psyche especially we have an understandable affinity with failure.
In historical terms, all the rebellions that formed part of our history were failures in their day but each failure eventually became a rallying cry for the next effort.
In industrial relations, the 1913 lockout ended in bitter failure for the trade unions but quickly became a source of inspiration for a resurgent movement.
There is an allegedly old saying: “Observe how ends become beginnings.” It’s true that failure always leads on to something, though that something isn’t always bright and wonderful but can be dark and bitter.
At the moment, due to the failure of various people during the boom and due to the sale of the future of so many families to vulture funds – by those who should have protected but instead betrayed – some are facing absolutely crushing loss.
I expect that many experience this as a huge failure and that this has motivated some men to take their own lives.
The pain of this loss and sense of failure must be terrible and this is one “turn in the road” that nobody wants to approach.
It strikes me that the only good inheritance people can pass on to their children in this situation is the example of how they bore their loss and how they shouldered that sense of failure. And to do this, they have to stay alive.
And it might happen that, financially, they won’t rise again. I know from my own family history that you have to be sceptical about financial success anyway; it comes and then it goes.
I also know from my own family history that the thing the next generation can take from it all into the future is the example of how the loss, the failure, was borne.
That’s a very tall order if you’re the person who has to carry the experience. Sometimes it’s too much to carry alone, which is why I wish to God people would start talking about their circumstances to other people in the same boat.
In my opinion, whole swathes of middle class and professional people have been wiped out financially since 2008 but they won’t talk about it so we catch only glimpses of it.
But they need to talk about it rather than wander alone down a very dark road. If they talk about it, they might learn to stop seeing themselves as failures. And even if they cannot shake that self-judgment, they may come to realise a truth: In the end, we matter, if at all, to a handful of people around us. And in the end, what will matter to them is not so much the failure itself as how we handled it.
Addendum
On a completely different matter, my recent column on the promotion of alcohol brought an email from
Edith Geraghty
of the voluntary No Name Club. No Name Clubs “are run by and for young people aged 15 years and over who come together in safe and lively environments where there is fun, friendship and enjoyment without the pressure of alcohol or other drugs”. They’ve been around since 1978 and can be found in more than 30 locations. They’re a great idea and you can check them out at nonameclub.ie
pomorain@yahoo.com @PadraigOMorain
Padraig O'Morain is accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His latest book is Mindfulness for Worriers. His daily mindfulness reminder is free by email.