Plan To Fail

Plan To Fail

They say that if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail. This is quite a stereotypical cliché. Failure happens even with the best of planning. The phrase assumes that we have complete control over our fates, given we provide enough effort. But failure is guaranteed, thanks to external factors and our own human

Failure is inevitable in professional lives. Few of us get straight A+s forever. I have failed plenty of times in academia. I have failed assignments in high school, subjects at university, and deadlines at grad school. I know. You would think I had this whole academic routine down pat by postgraduate life. But the rest of life gets the better of me. It happens. 

Perhaps I am too comfortable with academic failure. Our current digital world is dominated by entrepreneurs who failed academically. Steve Jobs dropped out of Stanford to create computers. Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard for Facebook. Lady Gaga left Tisch School of the Arts to perform in clubs. Many of our biggest icons did not worry about academics. Then why do it? Is it just a fall back? No. It is a chance to learn something I love. I just don’t let it get in the way of successes in the rest of the world. That is my priority for success and failure. We all have the right to prioritize academics and commercialism differently. 

Even if we do succeed academically, it could be at the expense of creativity. It will be what someone else wants to read. Our own opinions need to be second priority. There will always be subjective work, which could have been done differently. Whether it is a fail or a recommendation for change, it is a hurdle to face. 

Friendship is a failure that does not get enough attention. Just like any other failure, it is a normal part of human life. The only option is to embrace that failure and learn from it. I recently became forgetful with friends’ matters, after my attention was consumed by work. The failure to forgive is a hiccup, which many friends face. Some friends never forgave my incidental one-off forgetfulness. I have been on both the giving and receiving end of this one. Whether it’s failure for friendship morals, or failure to forgive, it’s a part of life. I took 25 years of life to forgive people for not forgiving. It’s just another difficulty we face as flawed human beings. It’s ok. We are beautifully flawed.

Photoshop fails are a part of life that I feel a deep need to write about. Public people cop a lot of impatience from us mere mortals for their Photoshopped imagery. In this day and age, that practice is hypocritical. We all edit ourselves. For the general publics, it’s called Instagram. Who hasn’t used a faded filter on a zit covered day? Don’t we all make sure our eyes look extra bright on a bold filter? Let’s give the celebs a break. We are all our own personal celebrities.  

These are just a few ways in which failure is inevitable. We can try to avoid failure. But ugly failure is in the eye of the beholder, just like beauty. Physical imperfection should not be the only flaw to accept. Body image is fine. But what about morality image? Let’s get off our high horses. Then we will be more in touch with reality. Go ahead. Fail. Embrace it. I dare you.