Genres are a funny little concept aren’t they? Yes they are.
In theory they have a simple definition that’s easy to understand.
But in practice, some may feel confined, echoes the voice of Linda Martell on Cowboy Carter, Beyonce’s latest album.
Linda Martell was the first commercially successful Black female artist in the country music field. Source: Rolling Stone.
The album goes on to stretch genres, span eras, and demonstrate to listeners the power of liberating oneself from categories and definitions that at one point may have served them and taught them what they needed to know, but now, no longer do.
Last year, I experimented with disposing two words I’d been sensing my unravelling from for the last ten.
Two funny little concepts with simple definitions that ruled, outlined, and decided much of what I did in my twenties and are also not surprisingly, entrenched in the North American social, political, and economic order in which I live:
Failure
is a funny little concept.
Success
is a funny little concept.
In practice, some may feel confined.
Contrary to bite-sized self-help clickbait: by stepping away from the fear of failure, I have not succeeded in the concrete sense of the word. By stepping away from the word failure altogether, there have been no accolades, no grand achievements, no added happiness.
Instead, I’ve encountered something far more powerful, something I’d only experienced in fits and waves but always had a feeling was the whole point. In Greek (as well as many other languages with ancient worldviews embedded into them) there is a word that comes close to getting at what I mean here: Eudaimonia. It means, ‘human flourishing’ or ‘living well’ and involves creating meaning and fulfulling one’s potential with balance, harmony, and curiosity, never rushed, or attached.
So, with a dose of the Eudaimonic mindset combined and the posture of a shrug that acknowledges that nothing really matters and we’re all gonna die one day anyway, I have written a novel that may never see the light of day. I have picked up languages without becoming fluent. I have moved to cities and neighbourhoods and countries where I knew not a soul, and left not knowing many more. I have sent invitations and applications and received no reply. I have taken musical lessons without the expectation I would become anything more than an amateur. I have studied subjects and become certified in fields I have never used. I have accepted that I’m not so good at most things and I have also been delusional in my dreaming, without expectation that these ideas are anything more than entertainment, colours to paint my inner world.
I have suspended my disbelief.
I have shushed my self-doubt.
I have shown up anxious and timid and full of dread.
I have shown up confident and relaxed and full of curiosity.
I have done my best to remain rooted in values of compassion, respect, and acceptance, and their sister forms: self-compassion, self-respect, and self-acceptance, each equal in importance and impact.
And what I have realised is that it is next to impossible now to label any one of the experiences I have had as either a success or a failure because no equation exists that calculates the myriad of ripple effects they’ve had on the richness (both the stunning and the ugly) of my life insofar. A micro-interaction in a Zoom meeting, or with a stranger on a train, or the path I took by listening and following my intuition, or the unexpected joke I found in a mundane moment, or the lesson I gained from feeling hurt and rejected, or the new source of inspiration found in an ordinary conversation or shot of familiar landscape. None of these would count in an evaluation of my life in search of successes or failures. And yet, each one has nudged me forward and backwards and sideways on my journey, and for better or for worse, on other’s journeys too. As Maya Angelou once said (paraphrased), you have no idea of your legacy and, you never will.
I’ve learned that life is not a series of goals or milestones to be reached. It is to be experienced not vertically but rather in jagged spirals so that one does not miss out on the jewels every single job, relationship, bus ride, meal, song, or any other moment carries within it. Jewels in the form of expanded or new understandings and unexpected opportunities to grow smarter, more loving, more forgiving, more connected, more in tune with what the body needs, or what someone else needs and ultimately, more at peace.
When I was twenty I was offered my first real job, to work as an intern for a Government department. I moved into tiny bedroom in a shared house half-hidden by snowbanks in Gatineau, Quebec and got onto the bus every morning feeling uncertain in my itchy professional attire and dreading the possibility of making mistakes, of seeming incompetent.
I was however, driven to learn something, anything, new. Over the next four months, as it turned out, my only task was to deliver by hand, documents to the Minister’s office for her signed approval. That’s it. I never even saw the minister, just her bored looking admin assistant who never tried to learn my name. I didn’t have a manager to report to, just a colleague who told me about rock bands I’d never heard of when he wasn’t sighing heavily, perpetually buried in ministerial briefs and reports.
At the end of my term was an all-staff event in the main hall. During a Q&A period, I took the microphone spontaneously and shaking, and asked an Indigenous Elder who had just finished her presentation (whose name I don’t have now), on what young people starting out their career in Government can do to contribute to Truth and Reconciliation in Canada. Her eyes crinkled and she said, Just walk towards peace, and you will find peace.
Those words, received in the vessel of what at the time felt like a `failed` experience, have guided and supported my path ever since.
I am neither failing nor succeeding. I am getting up every day to do what is essential, by moving towards inner and outer peace, by looking for it, feeling it, creating it, and expanding it.
I am neither failing nor succeeding. I am doing my best instead to recognize where I still need to do grow, and getting up each day with the intention to do so.
