Chantelle Leswell ’20J | Opinions Staff Writer
I’ve been reflecting a lot over break, mostly through journaling snippets of thoughts, ideas and feelings, but also through poring over the past five years of my life with loved ones. These years have been unquestionably formative and, predictably, incredibly difficult in ways I could never have anticipated. What I was able to decipher, while in a place I struggle to call home anymore, was that failure and the state of being unable to anticipate what’s coming from much of what has shaped me over these past few years.
To be clear, I don’t equate failure with the dirty reputation it brings, nor do I give it the satisfaction of defining me. But I do acknowledge that, more often than not, plans not being realized or hopes not coming to fruition are deemed by and large as “failure,” and I’ve had no shortage of these situations over recent years. For example, I got two Cs on my transcript in my junior year of high school, which heavily compromised my college prospects — or at least it felt that way, at the time. Two years ago I really struggled with mental illness, leading to the cancellation of a non-refundable Europe trip with a close friend — that felt like I’d forever be thought of as unreliable and selfish. Just last semester I felt like I had profoundly failed when I couldn’t make the love from an old friendship stretch to make it new again. But what I realized is that each one of these difficulties placed in my path served the purpose of making me stronger (forgive the cliche). I learned how to value myself outside of my grades, I learned how to communicate my needs, I learned that people grow apart despite the love they have for one another; it’s an endless process of learning.
Of course, it’s important to reckon with the idea that failure is a subjective process and, as such, doesn’t even need to exist if we don’t find a place for it in our own world. I think, regardless of terminology, challenges that throw us for a loop carry a weight that few other phenomena do; they force us to reframe our entire worldview while maintaining the balance between making tangible positive changes and not overwhelming our senses. In essence, everybody needs to fail sometimes. Whether you behave poorly towards a loved one, you don’t live up to the standard you, or others, have set for yourself in academia or even if you reach the proverbial rock bottom, all that’s left to do is to take a breath and keep moving forward. The important thing to realize is that we all experience these moments — moments that feel like points of no return — and most of us will reach them a hundred times over, but the reality is that we cannot truly experience success without reckoning with life’s hardest lessons first.
These events and experiences are woven so tightly into the fabric of our lives that they become part of us on a fundamental level. Difficult situations are inevitable, but they’re also not built to last. I’ll say that again. Difficult situations cannot, and will not, endure; pressure in our daily lives is simply not sustainable. With that in mind, we realize there are few options other than to reject the negative feelings that these situations bring and grow past them. Try to keep that in mind the next time you encounter something seemingly earth-shattering: not only will it pass, but it cannot pass without your growing to overcome it first.
