On Setback, Struggle, and Embracing Imperfection.
I originally wrote this as a note to Charles Njoku, and thought to edit it and share it with everyone.
Struggle is a beautiful thing, and a lot of the time, people think it’s such a dark place to be, they will throw pity around and sometimes disgust. So when someone says “I am struggling with xxxx” people just infer that it must be really dark to be them, ‘hate to be you right now”, ewww disgusting.
And I am often humbled to speak with people who are going through a struggle and reach out because to struggle is an act of courage, you know what’s even more courageous, seeking help in a world that heavily rewards perfection and performance. And we get what it means to struggle wrong a lot. The dictionary says; make forceful or violent efforts to get free of restraint or constriction. It means to contend forthrightly with something (you may not understand) that seeks to pull you down and trust me, there’s nothing off-putting about that, you are doing your possible best. People who admit struggle in any area of their lives are some of the strongest people I know. At least they can identify that something is eating at who they are, and they want to do something about it, that’s as real as it gets.
A lot of people are struggling at that new job, navigating relationships and romance, addictions, heck even the things people celebrate? Like marriage, like finances, like every single happy thing you can think of. There’s a tonne of people who just cave under that weight, but here you are adjusting the sails, watching the winds, making little changes to your life in ways to make sense of your struggle. To struggle especially when everyone expects so much of you can feel like swimming in an above-ground pool, you feel like drowning, but hey, to others it looks cool.
There will be things in your life that would not add up, and that’s okay. These things when mentioned will look so foreign to the onlooker, but only you know, and if you’ve been courageous enough, some others would, and if they are kind enough, they’d put everything on the table to help you win. These seeming paradoxes will make for an interesting life if you truly change how you see. It’s sometimes very ironic; to feel so perfect, yet so flawed, to feel so loved and yet so alone, those are real things.
Hard things always test you in a rather taunting way like a boxer strutting weightlessly in that dance around the ring, you know it can punch the life out of you, but hey look at you, going into the ring shaking, knowing that you may well die or at best come out with a coma-inducing concussion. And I make this reference about boxing because I’ve recently become fascinated with the sport, it’s exciting to see how brave boxers are. To hit a punch, you take a risk of being hit, and hey, no one gets anywhere without risking going somewhere, I don’t know if this makes any sense.
And this has always been instructional in how I think about hard things. I show up (or at least, I try to), and showing up isn’t a fool’s game, and I do experience some setbacks here and there, but it’s easy for me to smile at them because they provide such a valuable learning opportunity to experience real growth.
You are going to have to be critical with yourself; am I just plain stupid? Do I need to go learn this sh*t all over? Do I need the silence to concentrate on my growth in this area? Maybe I need to just admit that I am terrible at this? What is working? What’s not working? What can I do better?. To answer questions like these and be honest with yourself through that process? I don’t know man, that can be hard. To grade yourself and fail yourself and point out learning points? That’s brave. It’s something Iyinoluwa Aboyeji said once on an investment call “Establish a bunch of questions that keep you focused on your why”, I don’t know, do with that what you will.
Everyone is moving and with moving comes bumps. Bumps mean you are on the road, and to be on the road, that’s a wildly optimistic thing you are doing setting yourself up for success, but don’t mistake it, knee crippling failure is also on the menu. When people fail at something they’ve set their heart to, it can be crazy downcasting, and you feel the need to throw it all away, but hey, setbacks are proof that you are on a journey, and that you are doing this dangerous thing to forge a better life for yourself, moving in the direction of the life you want to live and to emerge as the person you want to become.
And failure? You will deal with that a lot, but something I told a friend recently, you need to not personalize failure. “This thing I did failed” well looks to me that you made an attempt, and you didn’t get it right, and it’s perfectly okay for that to exist on its own and not become your go-to adjective. Because to personalize failure on that level is to build up these scenarios of bad things you think are going to happen, and you can’t necessarily get out of that loop, the more you think about it, the more you convince yourself, and you become trapped in this cycle of self-doubt, now that’s a dark place to be in, nothing moves, just #000000.
And to play in public like most of us are is to navigate a minefield of varying emotions from people and structures, and that can be Messi (messy, but you get the joke). it’s just like sports, there’s no place to hide, and the memory I often associate with this is Bukayo Saka crying his eyes out and the England team after they lost at the Euro Finals. To lose publicly like that, yo! That does something to you.
Sometimes, man, bad luck is going to be the best luck you’ll have at that time, so sometimes, don’t place it all on the outcomes. If it’s all in the outcome, you lose so much in how you got there and what it meant to you. The Olympics design of the race track is a philosophical lesson in that; after every finish line, there’s a starting line, so optimize for the journey more times than you do the destination. This experience simply made me find a new joy in living life.
Good things and bad things can happen side by side, and that’s something you are going to have to deal with, but you know what’s a marvelous thing, the courage to keep on creating like you are. Sometimes, you just got to go through with it, and you are never going to be the same again, something in you will fundamentally change that’s more open to failing and losing and all the non-glamorous stuff we hate to talk about. The show must go on, you miss the ball, you pick it up and you continue.
So no, setbacks shouldn’t invalidate your journey, it’s only proof that you are moving. And anytime you feel like wrapping this show up, remember that setbacks are a present reminder that you are up to it. Keep moving, in a way, life sorta balances out, I think?
