The Space of Failure

From the Victorian Romantic Tarot, the Page of Pentacles; from the Dreaming in Color Deck, 'Fear:'

          Don't let the slouching teen on the fur fool you; he is constructing something in his head. First, he sees in his mind what he wants to create, then he'll diagram it on paper (looking for any flaws) while listing the resources he will need. With paper in hand, he'll gather his tools and supplies and begin working to materialize his idea. This studious young man can seem like an old man in a young body; he is often too serious and worries about all the 'what ifs.' I'd tell him to go read Pema Chodron's advice to her granddaughter's graduating class:

If you want to be a complete human being, if you want to be genuine and hold the fullness of life in your heart, then failure is an opportunity to get curious about what is going on and listen to the storylines. Don’t buy the ones that blame it on everybody else, and don’t buy the storylines that blame it on yourself, either.

Out of that space of failure can come addictions of all kinds—addictions because we do not want to feel it, because we want to escape, because we want to numb ourselves. Out of that space can come aggression, striking out, violence. Out of that space can come a lot of ugly things.

 I can tell you that it is out of this same space that come our best human qualities of bravery, kindness, and the ability to really reach out to and care about each other. It’s where real communication with other people starts to happen, because it’s a very unguarded, wide-open space in which you can go beyond the blame and just feel the bleedingness of it, the raw-meat quality of it.


It’s from that space that our best part of ourselves comes out. It’s in that space—when we aren’t masking ourselves or trying to make circumstances go away—that our best qualities begin to shine.