Introductory Remarks on Our Lives of Falling Down

MD: My Friend Failure

Failure is an old, reliable friend. Not a friend that I particularly enjoy spending time with, but one of those friends you have when you are a kid who, come junior high, you realize is bringing you down socially, and you think, if I could just flat-leave you and approach the cool kids at the quarry and be like, “hey, what’s up,” then they’d totally be like, “dude, you are one of us,” and I would find my rightful seat in that sphere of social acceptance where everything I say is hilarious and even the way that I can’t seem to peg my jeans right becomes a statement about how I’m not dictated by societal norms and have to go my own way because I will not be tamed like the noble wolf, the stallion or Marky Mark.

That’s who I could be, but my buddy Failure is a hanger-on. He never has any other plans! It’s always, “I’m doing whatever you’re doing, buddy.” And I’m like, “Yeah, well I’ve got my hands tied with this thing,” and he’s like “oh, cool, let me try.” And no sooner does he pick it up, that he breaks it! Whatever cool thing I do, he kills it and he looks up at me with his stupid, dumb face, and says, “So, what are we doing now?”

But then I feel bad when I don’t call him. And even when I go to the quarry to find the cool kids, they’re never there or if they are, I chicken out and hide in the bushes and hope they don’t hear me slinking away. Then I get lonely, so I call Failure because he’s always free at a moment’s notice to fill the silent void of an otherwise uneventful existence. And we hang. And it’s fine, I guess, except I know it’s not. But I bide time and think, “It’s only two more years. High school is going to change everything!”

So, at this point in my adulthood, I am in a common-law marriage with Failure. It’s an open relationship with flirtations and affairs, but usually we wind up going home with each other. I never did catch up with the cool kids, but that’s ok. Failure is family now and he has earned his place at the table where he eats a portion of the meal I make for myself.

SJ: Failure Metric

I’m a failure.

I live in the city of my dreams. I’ve acted on Broadway stages and worked with my idols. I’ve run five marathons. I have a college degree and a masters degree. I pay my bills and my taxes. I’m married to a great guy. I have lovely friends. I’m a pretty decent cook. I love my family and they love me back. But trust me, I’m a total failure.

New York is a terrific town for failing. In this city of soaring ambitions and dazzling ascents, failure is practically guaranteed. No matter what you’ve done or achieved, there’s always someone (and let’s face it, more usually, there are thousands of someones) who’s done and achieved more. And while it’s true that in the self-defeating sport of life-comparison, this conclusion can be drawn no matter where you are, the thing about New York is that the Mores are right here --writing their third novels beside you at the coffee shop, renovating the brownstone across the street from your four-story walk-up, starting non-profits over cocktails at your local, and generally reminding you that whatever you’ve done or achieved, you ain’t done or achieved squat. In New York, the gold medal winners in all conceivable life-evaluation categories don’t just exist in television interviews and newspaper spreads and on the pages of impressive literary journals (you know, the ones you keep telling yourself you should be reading). In New York, the winners live among us. In New York, the winners run wild.

It’s all relative of course. The temptation to take stock of one’s life by getting out the measuring stick and going to town is a rich one, but at some point – with any luck – one gets a hold of the idea that this is a foolish and false metric. Success must be self-determined, right? We each decide for ourselves how to score our progress and plateaus. We self-select the lens though which to view our movement in the world and the marks we’ve left on the ground we’ve tread, right? Trouble is, depending on the contours of one’s own little (limited) mind, self-defining success and failure doesn’t necessarily land you in better shape than the old measuring stick did.

For myself, I’ve come to understand that my flourishing sense of failure really has very little to do with what I’ve done, or how far I’ve come, or to whom I do or do not measure up. And I play fair – my sense of other people’s success or failure is similarly measured more or less without guidelines. The truth is, I have a tremulous fear that some people just are successes, while others just are failures. And for whatever reason – and yes, I’ve thought about the reason, but I’m trying to keep this relatively brief and at least marginally readable, so let’s skip it, yes? – I have always felt that I am, in a deep, immovable way, no matter what is happening in my life, a resident of Camp Fail. Even when I am, in some empirical way, “succeeding,” I know in my heart that I’m really just taking a fluky, how-the-other-half-lives vacation, and though I certainly enjoy the change of scenery, I know I don’t really belong, I know I’ll have to go home before too long, and I know that that’s just how it is, that’s just who I am.

It’s not actually as depressing as it sounds, I promise, because the absurdity of it isn’t lost on me. Of course it’s ridiculous. Of course it is false. Of course everyone’s lives are full of successes and failures, of course keeping score is insane. Of course no one is one thing. Of course we are not assigned a team for life based on our DNA or any other permanent mark. I get it, I do. And while I can’t seem to totally reprogram the underlying feeling, I can at least laugh at myself about it all. Which I do. A lot.

And being able to laugh at oneself?

Sounds like a success to me.