My breathing is labored and uneven; my breaths come out in hard, sharp rasps. My eyes involuntarily flutter shut for just a moment before I chastise myself in a breathless frenzy. I hear nothing but the blood pounding in my ears and the machine beneath me, which trembles as I crash down with every stride. But even louder is the penetrating voice of doubt which whispers insidiously that I will not, cannot make it. And yet I will not stop until I complete my course. I will not stop until I push myself to run past the finish line, and not before I count an extra ten seconds after I think I've reached my limit, because I need to prove to myself I can.
My mind goes blank as I force myself not to look down at the screen of my treadmill, forgetting everyone around me though I was once conscious of the man on the lower step stretching his calves, the football player climbing ladders and the friend running beside me. I count down in my head- five, four, three, two, one- I look down. I’ve just made it. I struggle to keep up as my right hand frantically lowers the speed to a crawl and my left attempts to propel me forward until I slow to a stop.
But I am not satisfied, nor am I proud. Rather, I am disappointed. For I know that I had not done my absolute best. Yes, my chest is on fire and my breaths ragged, but I had convinced myself that it was enough to stop here, right at this mark, than to go until I truly could not take it anymore. Deep down, past the layers and layers of excuses and self defense, I knew I could’ve gone past merely a couple miles but had chosen to stop because I had thought and was afraid I wouldn’t make it to the next checkpoint. I was afraid to fail.
I had grown up fearing the inevitable: failure. I procrastinated my school work, wanting to wait as long as I could before completing a potential “F.” And before I turned in any assignments, I scrutinized every little detail and pored over their contents, wanting them to be perfect. On standardized tests, I was that one person everyone groaned about, the one that would never finish in reasonable time (yes, I went over every question twice.) And when I ran, I set a definite distance I knew I could comfortably complete. The immediate results were sleep deprivation, unnecessary inconvenience and a performance plateau marked by little improvement. But in a bigger picture, the results were a plethora of missed opportunities to refine, to surpass and to release myself from a tedious and overly-trying cycle of assiduous thinking, revising and editing. But never mind the missed opportunities or the invisible yet definite boundaries that kept me from the allegedly greater joy of success. I felt more secure in avoiding failure while wallowing in self-pity and knowledge that I was being irrational.
For years I had avoided the main question: “What about failure was I so afraid of?” It was a valid inquiry, but the answer had always eluded me. I realize only now; I was afraid of shame. I was afraid of shame that came along with a bad grade, the shame that came along with knowing I could’ve done better but ultimately did not. I was afraid of the shame I’d feel of coming short of what was expected of me, and ultimately, what I expected of myself. And even greater was the fear that I would not be able to surpass myself, that I would not be able to run farther or longer than before… and thus had slammed the pause button on the treadmill before I could see, disappointingly, that I did not have the capacity to finish the additional mile I began. But truly, the mindset of being afraid was the biggest obstacle keeping me from where I wanted to be. It prevented me from moving forward, from enjoying myself in whatever I did and deprived myself of true success. For true success, a victory, comes only after the willingness to accept the possibility of failure. But I hadn’t been in it to win it. I had simply been playing not to lose.
Realizing this has allowed me to face what I had long detested. Now, I no longer fear failure. I embrace it. For the fruits of failure are growth and learning as well as an opportunity to rethink our approaches to seemingly insurmountable problems. And although failure is always a possible outcome, it is unborn and tentative. It comes hand in hand with advancement and inextricably with success.
As Ursula K. Le Guin had written in her novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, “It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.” I believe success to be the destination and failure (as well as the efforts to overcome it) to be the journey.
Long gone are the days I didn’t attempt the extra mile because I thought I couldn't complete it. Instead, I welcome the challenge, fail or succeed.
