Accepting Failure is better than regretting about the same
At school, we were taught that Aesop’s fox was a loser. He had tried hard to get to those delicious-looking grapes dangling seductively from a vine curled tenaciously around the topmost branch of a ridiculously tall tree. On failing to do so, he walked away describing them as sour. Loser!
But I have my doubts.
By declaring it sour, the fox moved on to a happy life. Would we rather he spends the rest of his life in regret? Feeling anger. Feeling shame. Feeling cheated. Going on and on about how those privileged monkeys can always get access to those delicious-looking grapes that dangle seductively from vines that curl tenaciously around the topmost branches of ridiculously tall trees. Must he transform his pain into poetry, and become a courtier of the literary circuit? Must he transform his longing into art, or the essence of his future identity?
Or must he just reframe the situation, see himself as nature’s lucky one, who escaped eating horribly sour grapes? Maybe even poisonous ones?
Who decides if grapes are actually sweet or sour? The ones who eat it, or the one’s who don’t. Who is this Aesop who judges the fox who is determined to unleash his imagination to be happy? Why do we let other people determine the parameters of what is success and what is not? Isn’t that the greatest failure: the wilful letting go of our ability to write our biography on our terms, believing that every decision taken is a march towards success?
It all depends on what we make of our life today. If we are miserable, then yes, all those admissions we did not get, those boyfriends we did not meet, those jobs we did not find, are the sweet grapes that went to the lucky others. But if we are happy with what we have today, then we can heave a sigh of relief that we did not get those admissions/boyfriends/jobs. Who knows what sour taste they would have left in our mouth?
Humans have the gift of imagination. We use it to imagine the parameters of success, and hence failures. Imagination also enables us to reject these parameters and create those that make us deliriously happy. There are no real parameters out there. There is no Aesop.
There is only the fox and those grapes dangling seductively from vines that curl tenaciously around the topmost branches of ridiculously tall trees.
But I have my doubts.
By declaring it sour, the fox moved on to a happy life. Would we rather he spends the rest of his life in regret? Feeling anger. Feeling shame. Feeling cheated. Going on and on about how those privileged monkeys can always get access to those delicious-looking grapes that dangle seductively from vines that curl tenaciously around the topmost branches of ridiculously tall trees. Must he transform his pain into poetry, and become a courtier of the literary circuit? Must he transform his longing into art, or the essence of his future identity?
Or must he just reframe the situation, see himself as nature’s lucky one, who escaped eating horribly sour grapes? Maybe even poisonous ones?
Who decides if grapes are actually sweet or sour? The ones who eat it, or the one’s who don’t. Who is this Aesop who judges the fox who is determined to unleash his imagination to be happy? Why do we let other people determine the parameters of what is success and what is not? Isn’t that the greatest failure: the wilful letting go of our ability to write our biography on our terms, believing that every decision taken is a march towards success?
It all depends on what we make of our life today. If we are miserable, then yes, all those admissions we did not get, those boyfriends we did not meet, those jobs we did not find, are the sweet grapes that went to the lucky others. But if we are happy with what we have today, then we can heave a sigh of relief that we did not get those admissions/boyfriends/jobs. Who knows what sour taste they would have left in our mouth?
Humans have the gift of imagination. We use it to imagine the parameters of success, and hence failures. Imagination also enables us to reject these parameters and create those that make us deliriously happy. There are no real parameters out there. There is no Aesop.
There is only the fox and those grapes dangling seductively from vines that curl tenaciously around the topmost branches of ridiculously tall trees.
Comments