Dearest one,Â
This month, I want to talk to you about the feeling of failure.Â
Hereâs how I began thinking of it â I turn 29 in a couple of days. When I looked back at my twenties, I couldn't shake off the feeling that Iâve failed. What have I failed? Why have I failed? I was not sure. But there was this limp feeling, floating to the top of my consciousness like a dead fish. I have failed grandly at something.Â
After a week of driving myself nuts with this thought, I put out an Instagram poll to find out if more people felt this way. The response was pretty clear.Â
So I was not alone. But why were so many of us feeling this way? I spent a few more weeks mulling over this.
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At first, I thought of the unrealistic dreams Iâd had as a child. I wondered if I felt like a failure because I couldn't live up to them.
I wanted to have my first book out in my early twenties and at least a couple more out before I turned 30. I was also, as per my imaginings, going to climb to a New York Times #1 bestseller spot somewhere between my first and third book (I was oddly specific about fleshing out the details of a dream I had no idea how I was going to accomplish!).
Of course, none of that transpired. But I knew that as a child, the framework I came up with for my dreams was based on my limited understanding of how the world works.
No. I did not hold my life against my child selfâs barometer of success. That was not it.Â
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I then started to think that maybe failure was less about what I did and did not accomplish and more about a feeling. Where did this come from and why was it so hard to undo?
Around this time, I read a piece of Cheryl Strayedâs writing where she mentioned that our twenties will probably be our most entitled decade. Many of us feel as though we are owed a certain level of success simply because of how easily we have gotten so much in life. And when our privilege is only able to carry us so far, we become bitter. (I am paraphrasing from a whole section of her book Tiny Beautiful Things, this is not verbatim!)Â
This felt closer to what I was searching for. The failure I felt was sour, heavy, and a little angry. The word âbitternessâ stuck and as much as I hate to admit it, âentitlementâ did too.
But I soon realized that while the entitlement I clung to may have grown from privilege, the purpose it currently served was protecting me from a fear. I was afraid that if I wasnât owed anything, I was worth nothing.
How was I supposed to hold on to my worth, then? What was I doing that was making me feel the opposite of what I wanted?Â
Now I could tell you what I discovered when I started asking myself these questions, but instead, I want to show you.Â
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Imagine that a great thing has happened to you today. You got a raise, your manager commended the work you do, your friend got you a special gift, or your partner has just reminded you how much they love you.
Now imagine that a bad thing has also happened to you today. Your manager pointed out that youâve been making a lot of errors at work lately, you fought with your partner, your best friend is upset with you, or you received a rejection for a job youâve recently applied for.Â
You go through the motions and complete your daily grind. When you have a chance to wind down, you decide to process the day.Â
If you are anything like me, the first thing you think of will be the bad thing. My reasons for doing so look like this:
1. I tell myself that the good can and will wait for me, but the bad may seep into my life and fester if I donât sit with it and work through it right away.Â
2. Sitting with the good without addressing the bad makes me feel âfakeâ, as though my joy is not steeped in the fullness of my current reality, but a thing I am observing in some faraway corner of delusion.Â
3. I feel as though if I process the good first, the bad will come after it and devour it.
Our lives are filled with good and bad experiences that bring us joy and sorrow. I used this example to highlight how most of us approach processing our everyday life.
Over here, thereâs a reasonable structure to my thinking but in reality, itâs not the how the situation will play out. Hereâs what actually happens:
1. On the good waiting for you - A good thing may wait for you, but you may not be able to receive it second in line.Â
Trying to process joy right after youâve had to process something that hurt you, shamed you, or made you feel guilty is like telling a person with a decimated self esteem that they deserve the world. It wonât land because they are not in a space to receive that statement.Â
This imitates the pattern of emotional abuse where you are belittled and then put on a pedestal. It is unnerving and confusing at best, and downright triggering at worst.Â
Of course, you are not trying to be abusive to yourself. But remember that the same oppressive systems that paved the way for emotional abuse are the ones you are raised in, the ones that have guided your thinking and instructed you how to process your feelings. It has lied to you in big ways to restrict you from accessing the full force of your power. Because processing the good directly and immediately impacts your self-esteem in a positive manner.Â
Itâs easy to forget that itâs not only bad experiences that need hardcore processing, the good ones do too.Â
2. On feeling fake and delusional - Let me put it this way, processing the tough stuff before you get to the happy stuff is like knowing you cannot swim, jumping into an ocean, and hoping you will learn swimming along the way when you could have just taken the lifeboat that was right next to you. Â
We are raised in a patriarchal world that makes us feel as though repentance, penance, and redemption is the way out of every tiny harm we have caused. This isnât true. You donât owe the world your pain, only your best self. Most âbad thingsâ only need to be seen, addressed, and learnt from.Â
Also, remember that a person who feels loved and worthy will be able to accept when theyâve messed up much more easily because it doesnât throw their entire personhood into crisis.
Sitting with the good first is not being delusional, itâs creating a cushion you deserve. Process the good, use the cushion, please take the damn lifeboat.Â
3. On the fear of losing joy - Holding off on feeling a good thing because you are afraid that it will go away is what shame researcher Brene Brown calls âforeboding joyâ.Â
In her words â We donât want to be blindsided by hurt. We donât want to be caught off-guard, so we literally practice being devastated or never move from self-elected disappointment. When we spend our lives pushing away vulnerability, we canât hold space open for the uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure of joy.Â
Now isnât that a large gulp of truth, if there ever was one?Â
From processing joy second to not processing it at all, there are all sorts of ways we keep ourselves from the vulnerability and risk of joy's emotional exposure. We are so afraid of it being taken away that we donât even give it a chance to arrive.Â
But joy is not fickle. It adds on to the truth you hold of yourself. If you welcome it, it will become a part of your story.Â
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I realized that we feel our worth when we deeply connect to our positive experiences in this world. For this, we need vulnerability. We need celebration. We need these over and over again at every step of the way.
When we integrate each of these experiences into our bodies, we can look back at a whole year or decade and viscerally know that we are successful. Because being successful is not so much about checking XYZ off our lists but about being able to hold the feeling of having done so and knowing it intimately.Â
Until recently, I had never let a single victory or accomplishment fully sink in. By the time I realized the necessity of celebration, I had already lived most of my twenties. There were so many things I didnât celebrate, so many wins I didnât process. Instead, I would always pay heed to the negative experiences around me and brush the good aside in one fell swoop of faux humility.Â
So of course I didnât feel successful. Success wasnât going to show up in a grand fashion at the end of some âbig enoughâ experience when I didnât even know how to feel it in the smallest of ways.Â
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Earlier this year, I attended a friendâs wedding. It was a lengthy ceremony that started with an hour of separate poojas for the bride and groom.Â
When I asked what was happening, I was told that this was âjust in case they had not had a pooja for any of the key events in their lives so far.â Think birth, the first time they crawled, used a pen, and so on.Â
Iâm currently wondering if thereâs a similar all-inclusive devotional ritual I can conduct to honour all my milestones that I didnât observe with the reverence they deserved. There probably isnât, but I am a creative soul so who knows? I will keep you posted.Â
Until then, just remember this â Success is not about how things look. Itâs about how they feel. Itâs a collection of feelings we have allowed for ourselves, a repertoire of good we have taken in and told ourselves we are worthy of. Anything else will always leave us falling short.
So please celebrate and feel your successes the best way you know how. Even the small ones matter because they add up. You are not a failure. You are worthy of all the joy this world offers you.Â
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Love,
Soumya
đ Some happy news: Kishore and I launched physical copies of our zine Things I Voicenote Myself About yesterday and you all bought us out in a few hours! We will be getting more copies ready soon, so stay tuned. đ
Miscellany âš
Boyish - A monthly newsletter discussing how gender stereotypes affect boys in India + inspirational stories of Indian men who defied these stereotypes.
We should celebrate all types of achievements in a womanâs life the way we do weddings and pregnancies.
On fear and how to surrender to it. (This is long but I promise itâs worth it!)
The impossible ideals of the âWriterâs Lifeâ.
A writer and artist whose work single-handedly saved me during the second wave.
Creators I love đ©âđš
Meet Henna Bajaj, a mandala artist whose work blows me away each time I see it.Â
Hereâs how I got to know Henna - In 2017, I worked for a womenâs networking app where I collated stories of incredible women across the country. When I told a friend about it, he said I had to speak to Henna. He wasnât wrong. Years later, I am still the biggest fan of her exuberant spirit and everything she creates!Â
More about Henna in her own words -- âI am a mandala artist. I started making these in April last year when my food business took a hit (pandemic + multiple lockdowns). Since then I have been able to monetize this as well by working on commissioned pieces and by means of workshops.
Art in general, and mandalas specifically, has been very meditative and calming for me. Mandalas, in the simplest terms, are symbols that represent the infinity of the universe. These are usually circular and were made with sand in the olden days but contemporary artists are exploring various shapes and mediums for the same. I usually work with gouache as a medium and my forte is ornamental intricate larger than life mandalas.â
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Thank you for being here and reading my work. Iâve gotten to know many of you over the past couple of months and it has been so wonderful! If youâd like to say hello or wish me happy birthday, just reply to this email. đ