The shallow pretense of failure - on failure & fakeness

What happens when you have learned that failure is like a toxic chemical polluting the river of your existence? You avoid it, not in a natural way, but in a contrived and resistance-led manner. Like a gecko holding onto its wooden pole while taking a sunset stroll perpendicular to the floor.

And then what happens if the thing you resist happens? You may not be prepared to face it, because you have never encountered it before but have only imagined what it is like, and created huge castles of thoughts and stereotypes around it.

Yet, the key thing about failure is to conceptualize it most functionally. It is a natural development of the current circumstances and there is nothing to change about it. It’s like trying to improve yourself, even though you don’t quite know what yourself means or whether it can be improved in the first place.

I remember a story from my friend Jack. He went to a cooking class at a farm one time with other people he didn’t know. No one knew each other, besides a married couple. Everyone pretended they were enjoying the experience, knew how to cook, and that the food was 100% delicious 100% of the time. Jack felt confused about the situation, as he wasn’t so ecstatic about the whole experience. He doubted his perception of reality and remained silent, matching his behavior to the situation.

He said that the conversations felt shallow and unnecessarily upbeat as if everyone was held at gunpoint being told to smile and not tell what’s inside of them really, or else a giant venomous snake would come out of the ground and bite them to a strenuous fight with pain and death.

One person speaking up is often enough to break the cycle of fakeness in a group. That person could speak up about his perception of the situation, or share a deeper level or ridiculous thought or feeling that breaks the shallow reef and brings the high tide back into the ocean again.