A light-bulb moment on fear
Advent
Fear of failure – for the longest time without fail, a dogged enemy. Always lurking, stalking me wherever I went, keeping me awake at night, incessant, in the shadows – ready to pounce and destroy me.
So fearful was I at one stage that I perceived failing at anything as bad. Instantly, it made me an utter failure full stop: no redemption, just a failure. And I didn’t want to have such a label. Who does?
Bible filled with courageous people
Yet, the Bible abounds with men and women of courage, who erred but managed to turn it around. The whole point of Christmas is to celebrate a Saviour who came to save us from sin. Moreover, we have a God who generously bestows grace on imperfect humans; how blessed we are.
That is actually the good news of the season. Jesus came to give you and me a second chance. We have another shot at getting our lives right, not perfect, just doing our best to follow him every day. And if we are unable to do our best, there is grace.
Is God not incredibly generous? Do we not serve an awesome God?
FEAR
Fear can be defined in many ways. A popular acronym for F-E-A-R is false evidence appearing real. And there are myriad others along the same lines.Sometimes, we are just plain terrified of what other people will say about or think of us. We may experience it like an indictment of our characters. Nobody, in the right mind, gravitates towards being a failure.
Perhaps, we first need to dissect what being successful is. There are many definitions. But what about a dream to innovate something useful that would be utilised for centuries to come? If so, Thomas Edison is acknowledged as the one who invented the first commercially available, incandescent light bulb but only after trying and failing at it more than most.
If he gave up at any time in the process, someone else, I have no doubt, would have patented and produced it. And as prolific an inventor as he was, he would probably have invented something else. As prolific as he was, he was also well acquainted with failure. After all, innovation typically requires it.
What failure is not
The issue of when it is wise to quit a venture, and whether that decision brands one a failure or not, is beyond the scope of this piece and a story for another day. What I want to emphasise is that perhaps failure is par for the course en route to success.
Would you have given up after 10 attempts? Maybe 100? There is something about persevering isn’t there? He is also on record as having said:
“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.“
THOMAS EDISON
Sourdough makes a reappearance
Some friends in my circle have taken to baking sourdough bread. This endeavour requires quite the combination of art and science. When my friend who was teaching us told me I needed 212 grams of flour, and that this baking undertaking was going to be so precise, this woman knew straight off the bat that she was not a candidate. I am a pinch-of-this and a little-of-that kind of a girl.
Apparently, you need to perfect the craft and it normally takes about six months to do so: six months of trial and error in order to learn to bake this particular kind of bread. My sister has been baking away, relishing the opportunity to bake a great sourdough. Yes, sourdough bread had got me into a tizz before – brain fog and all. But I digress.
Baking, trial and error
Once again, after weeks of baking, my sibling was bemoaning a less-than-successful attempt. Every time she baked, she tried to tweak an aspect of the baking process to get the bread to produce an “ear”. Did you know that these loaves developed ears during baking?
I have since also discovered that the number of mistakes one can make to impede the perfect baking of this bread seemed to be endless. Is it even an endeavour that should be mastered?
Well, for starters, so many people have begun to demonstrate gluten intolerance and eating a healthy, dense loaf of bread is nutritious as the flour is stone ground and there is huge emphasis on quality.
This dense characteristic of the bread promotes a feeling of being satiated, something that the store-bought, light-weight loaf is hopelessly inadequate at providing not to mention the fibre and other dietary benefits.
Another unspoken benefit is the therapeutic one of creating something using one’s hands. In a world that sometimes seems to be swinging off the pendulum, this time-honoured tradition of baking is just the trick for weary professionals to unwind.
Lesson and opportunity
In an interview published by Reuters, Linsey Vonn, the world skiing champion, revealed her take on failure specifically regarding her finances but applicable to us in general: “Failure is your best lesson and your biggest opportunity.”
Perhaps, as we gear up for another year, putting our past failures into perspective can go a long way to helping us to change the narrative of some of our worst mistakes.
I had a quote stuck to my wall when I used to edit and found myself agonising over punctuation.
Reframing our take on mistakes
Perhaps, reframing how we look at mistakes, imperfections and failures can help us in the long run.
After all, some of the greatest men in history made them and, today, we understand their foibles and it endears them to us – and they come across as so much more relatable.
The ones in the Bible do not appear to be holier-than-thou type of men. I wonder if that is not the reason, Jesus specifically chose the likes of Peter, Andrew and the rest of his motley crew. There was no hint of living perfectly there, flawed characters they were, and yet these men turned the world right-side up.
We have a choice to make, live by God’s grace and make mistakes, ultimately, leading somewhere great. Or never make a mistake, be paralysed by the fear of failure, and achieve middling success.
As we reflect on the heroes of the Bible, specifically the ones who walked most closely with Jesus during his earthly walk, I am sure that they would surely exhort us to live a life of faith. Yes, despite the mistakes we make along the way. They saw Jesus dying on a cross so we may know grace and live, and they saw him ascend to heaven.
It is our privilege to await the Second Coming. When he does, will he find us filled with faith and unafraid? Something to think about, don’t you think?
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Please note Scripture quoted throughout is taken from the New International Version.
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