In my meanderings today I read this from Omid Safi:
“I fail often. We fail often.
I fail in moving towards the kind of human being that I want to become.
I fail in getting to the gym.
I fail in living the true meaning of these very words here.
Life has detours
And along the detours I have met wondrous friends,
Unanticipated experiences.
The breaking of the heart along the way
has brought a healing
and I am the combination of the wound and the healing.”
Two lines struck me here.
That last line resounded with me – “I am the combination of the wound and the healing.” Encompassed in that is the thought, the reality, that I am the combination of my success and the failure, my wins and my losses, my joy and sadness, my “good,” my “not so good” and my “bad.” Try as I may, desire as I might, they are me, they make me. I of course have some say over just how they make me. What happens to and around me is the raw material I have to work with in creating me.
The other line, however, is more subtle but seems even more powerful – “unanticipated experiences.” I may seem like wordsmithing, but it occurs to me that “unanticipated experience” reflects an attitude, a desire, as Samuel Beckett said, to “fail better,” a desire to see things that don’t go my way, don’t go as I planned, not as failures but as opportunities. That is, perhaps the bumper sticker should not be “Shit Happens” but “Unexpected Experiences Happen.” When an election does not go as I had planned, I could move to Canada, but I could also sit tight and “fail better” right here – plus, I am not a huge fan of snowbound winters.
It occurs to me... 