Failure

Does saying “I’ve failed” have to be so hard? I’m wondering....
I recently read an article in Newsweek about privileged white males out of work, some of them pretending still to be employed. Hard for me to feel empathy for them, as they have the privilege of pretending; their wives or savings are still supporting them, and I’m wondering then at what price comes the privilege of saying “I’ve failed?” The empathy I feel for them, is not for their career or economic situation, but their inability to face the reality of their situation. The poor and un-privileged are not 'blessed' with this ability to hide; the homeless have no where to pretend that everything is just peachy.

I wonder what is it that we’re holding onto when we hold out from saying, “I’ve failed.” A sense of ourselves as only good, only capable of good things, of not being capable of doing harm, or living in a world where no one can handle the dark sides of ourselves, really? Where if we say, “I’ve failed” everyone will desert us, or mock us, hurt us? What if saying “I’ve failed” means I don’t have a clue? What if saying "I’ve failed" means I don’t understand what’s going on around me? What if saying “I’ve failed” means that I’ve trusted in everything I’ve been told and in my privilege and never figured out how to live for me? What it saying “I’ve failed” means I may have to learn how to do new things, think new thoughts and be humbled in the face of those I’ve let down by my inability in the past to say, “I may be wrong”? Failure, and our ability to admit it, in itself, might be a type of grace. Grace that lets us begin again.

I’m still wondering, and wondering what can we do as humans to make it safe for us to say to ourselves and to each other, “I’ve failed.” To know that to fail is to be human, not to be a ‘failure.’ To live in our frailty and to be sure of forgiveness, from ourselves and others. To live in the security of love, not accomplishment or cash.