My minister is doing a series of sermons on the Beatitudes, and one statement he made last week really stood out for me:
“Success doesn’t make you more valuable. Failure won’t make you less valuable.”
Wow. That hit me dead-on. I’ve always been a bit of an over-achiever, a perfectionist, pushing myself to achieve MORE.
But his assessment rings true for me because I believe, as C.S. Lewis so succinctly put it, “You are a soul. You have a body.”
So these two parts of me are a bit dissonant. On the one hand, I know that as a soul, I have value just as any other soul does. No more, no less. But on the other side, (supported strongly by our culture), I feel I must DO something to be valuable, and that DOING should be successful.
In Finding Your Own North Star, Martha Beck talks about how all major life transitions go through a cyclical course, what she calls the Cycle of Change. The third of four squares is called The Hero’s Saga, and it’s characterized by a series of attempts and failures. After all, as humans, we learn through trial and error. When I heard Martha speak on it, she talked about how this stage is similar to playing golf. You keep hitting towards the hole, hopefully getting closer and closer each time. Eventually, you succeed, but it usually takes a fair bit of missing first. The mantra for this part of the cycle is “This is a lot harder than I thought, and that’s okay.” (Of course, part of you doesn’t agree with the “that’s okay” bit — it feels entirely too long and frustrating, but the “that’s okay” is to remind you it’s a normal part of the cycle.)
It has been challenging for me to welcome failure, even though I know it’s good for me (on some level). Perhaps I still measure my value by how much I’m succeeding, versus how I am being.
What do you think? I’d love to hear if this rings true for you as well.