Failures Teach A Better Understanding Of What’s Necessary To Succeed

All This Emphasis On Happiness And Life Advice Is Just Fixating On What We Lack

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons (workshopped)

We’re constantly bombarded with messages to give a hoot about everything: buying a bigger TV, a beautiful home, nicer clothes, and looking and being sexy. The world consistently tells us that the road to a better life is to make more, fuck more, be more. Look at the Facebook feed. You’ll see everybody’s life is more glamorous and happier than yours — the perfection we assign them. So our brain makes an automatic, statistical assessment. And we assume that their life is made up of all shiny red marbles.

How does that make you feel, ha?

According to science, of all the ways social media can be bad for you, one of the worst is the ability of Facebook and the like to induce envy. Whether our self-esteem is towering or slumping, one thing is unmistakable; we are a generation that compares, evaluates, and judges ourselves with great scrutiny.

Of course, intellectually, we all know that our real-life selves and highly curated online selves differ hugely. However, it’s still easy to fall into the trap of letting other people’s perfect social media profiles convince you that you don’t measure up.

While there’s nothing wrong with wanting more, the problem is that giving a hoot is bad for our mental well-being. Most of us don’t walk around feeling like we are all that celebrated. In fact, there is one underlying sensation that crushingly shapes our self-image and influences our behavior, and that is insecurity.

In this consumer culture and look-my-life-is-cooler-than-your-life social media has bred a generation of people who believe that having anxiety, guilt, fear, etc., is not okay. On the contrary, chasing a mirage of happiness opens us to become attached to the superficial.

Here’s a scenario, you’re so worried about doing the correct thing all the time that you grow worried about how much you’re worrying or feel guilty for every blunder you make that you start to feel guilty about how guilty you are feeling, creating a feedback loop from the netherworld.

An epidemic of stress, neuroticism, and self-hating is the result. Images of amazing, beautiful, happy people smiling their big, bleached toothy smiles make us question ourselves. “What’s wrong with me?” asks the depressed and deprived. “Why do I feel bad about seeing these amazing images?”

Then we feel bad for feeling bad or get angry about getting angry. It’s a loop. See?

Giving a hoot, whether for a job, a conversation that irked you, being cut off in traffic, or other mundane things, ignites thinking, and rehashing these situations can keep you trapped in your head instead of living in the physical world. And that’s why you shouldn’t give a damn. Just accept that the world is totally fucked up. It’s always been that way and will continue. So stop giving a damn about not feeling right because who cares?

George Orwell had it right when he said that to see what’s in front of your nose requires a constant struggle.

Over the past thirty years, stress-related issues, depression, and anxiety disorders have skyrocketed. With all the comfort life offers us, our crisis is not material; it’s existential. The more we pursue happiness and amass richness, the less satisfied we become, as it reinforces that we lack it in the first place.

A good example is right here on Medium. The more claps you desire, the more unhappy you become. The more you read about some bogus articles on how much money they make, the more unhappy you’ll become because you make only twenty dollars a month to their one thousand no matter how hard you try. No matter that those who claim they make thousands on Medium have only twenty followers.

In the words of the existential philosopher Albert Camus, “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of.”

In short: don’t try.

So, what does it mean when you pursue the negative to generate the positive? Sounds odd. Right? It’s simple. Failures teach you a better understanding of what’s necessary to succeed.

Or being honest with your insecurities makes you more charismatic around others. Or suffering through fears and anxieties gives you the tools to build courage and perseverance.

So many of us fear ourselves, our truth, and our feelings. We talk about the significance of life and love, but then we hide from both daily. We hide from our truest feelings. Because the truth is that life and love hurt sometimes, and the feelings this brings disturb us.

Is there something we should know, some crucial secret that would illuminate this whole story so that all its rotten shadows blaze to life with a great transforming meaning?

Yes, there is. But you have to be brave.

The moment you stare down life’s most difficult challenges and not give a fuck are the moments that most define your life. Life isn’t perfect, and the goal shouldn’t be to create a picture-perfect life but to live an imperfect life in a cloud of sweeping amazement. This may all sound like apathy, but it’s not. Not giving a damn is simply a refusal to waste energy and time on thoughts you won’t act on.

Any attempt to silence the unpleasant only backfires; hiding what’s shameful is a form of shame. The wisest, most loving, and most well-rounded people are likely those who have known misery, defeat, and the pain of losing something or someone they loved and have learned their way out of their despair. These people have gained an appreciation and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion and deep loving wisdom.

Our culture today is fixedly focused on unrealistically optimistic expectations: Be happier. Be healthier. Be the best, better than the rest. Be smarter, faster, richer, sexier, more popular, productive, envied, and admired. Be perfect and remarkable and crap out twelve-karat-gold nuggets before breakfast while kissing your selfie-ready spouse and two-and-a-half kids goodbye. Then soar your helicopter to your fulfilling job, where you pass your days doing extremely important work that’s likely to save the planet one day.

The need for more is what we seek — seeing things we don’t want to see — remembering things we don’t want to remember. Worrying about things we can’t change, a quantum particle trying to locate ourselves within a swirl of atoms — goaded on by the forked whip of ambition and fear, a beast stirring to life, stretching its claws.

Stop and think about it

All this emphasis on happiness and conventional life advice is just fixating on what you lack. There’s no need to be flashy to be impressive. No need to be famous to feel important. You don’t have to be a movie star to be flourishing. You don’t need a million followers to validate you. You don’t need to be authenticated by anyone else. You only need to believe in yourself and what you wish to achieve.

Because the cold, hard truth is that you will be dead soon. And in the short amount between now and then, wisely choose what to give a damn about.