No one I know likes to fail.
If you’re raised to honor your commitments, then failing to do so feels mortifying. Humiliating even.
I am on the precipice of the two most significant failures in my life, and yet I don’t feel humiliated. Or even mortified. I’m not ecstatic, but I don’t feel bereft. I guess I feel modestly hopeful.
I regret that I haven’t been able to deliver on my promises in both cases, but I’m an analyst, and circumstances being what they are I understand why I am in the position in which I find myself. That understanding has led to acceptance of my situation. I have regrets, but they are mild. I would have liked to achieve success, but that just isn’t where I am.
The most immediate failure is of the business I share with my wife. Opening a shared workspace business was a good decision. The sector is booming, and the social and professional dynamics around work support the move to more flexibility. Opening a shared workspace business a few months before a pandemic swept the world for two years (and counting) was an ill-timed decision. The pandemic destroyed any chance to grow a shared workspace business, and while our landlord deferred some of our rent, it didn’t feel benevolent enough to forgive any of it. We’ve hung on as long as we could, putting a lot of our own money and sweat equity into the business, but as surge after surge of Covid delayed a return to the office our cash reserves steadily dwindled until we are now out of room. So we wait to see if our landlord will make some concessions that allow the business to continue.
I’m not optimistic.
The second failure has been 34 years in the making. My marriage hasn’t always been bad, but it decayed as small hurts created distance, which in turn led to greater emotional injury. And over those years, despite many successes – the greatest being our two daughters – my wife and I didn’t tend to our marriage often enough. Though my wife isn’t blameless, I bear the largest share of responsibility. I am uncomfortable engaging with emotions, so even as she would sporadically ask me to work with her, I didn’t trust her – or myself – enough to make the effort. I didn’t make conscious choices to avoid difficult discussions, but benign or not, the effect was the same. And now our differences are irreconcilable.
So my business is failing, my marriage has failed, and I am left to start again.
It’s liberating in many ways though, which is in sharp contrast to the last time I had these few commitments – when I left college about forty years ago. I don’t feel intimidated or rudderless. I can make many different choices, and I feel excited about the opportunities ahead of me. And with our assets split and the kids launched, I’ll have few encumbrances, which expands the field of possible paths.
So while I wouldn’t have chosen to be here, I am here nonetheless. And it could be worse.