LIVING: The Fear of Failure
Jan 05 '01
Fearing failure is like fearing death. We’re all dying, just as we all fail at times.
When you think about it, all fears seem to boil down to the fear of death. Failure can be defined as the death of commercial success; appreciation, popularity, possessions and everything else associated with material productivity. So in a sense all fears are based on death or loss. The problem with fearing death is that it results in our fearing life itself. For better or worse, death is as natural a part of the living process, as beginnings and endings are a natural part of every process.
There is no rule book for living and each of us lives under different parameters – different levels of intelligence, emotional control, familial connections and opportunities. We each encounter this existence on a trial and error basis. That’s why there is no success without failure. Everyone who achieves something has also tried and failed.
The worst thing that we can impart to our children is a fear of failing. Fear is inconsistent with the will to create, produce, succeed and to live.
Worse yet, fear results in a “fight or flight response,” to that which is feared. We either run from or attack the source of our fears. Fear of others results in bigotry and the justification of violence against that which frightens or oppresses us.
Logic is the best defense against fear, because fear is merely another emotion that can be controlled or contained by better knowledge of the facts. Even in the face of real threats, fear is useless and counterproductive. Fear does nothing to help us deal with the threat at hand, it merely warns us of impending danger. Only a quick, rational analysis of the facts will allow us decide whether fight or flight is our best immediate response.
One of the most damaging ideologies in recent times has been “Deconstructionism,” which posits that Western man’s reliance on logic, which has given us the scientific method, is too “white, too male, too invasive and undervalues intuition and feeling.”
In truth, logic is all that separates us from instinctual beasts. Logic is all there is. Every emotion must be tempered, contained and controlled. The idea that there are positive (love, calm, happiness) and negative (hate, anger, fear) emotions is inane. All emotion is suspect, real, but suspect. It is certainly “better” or at least, more productive to engage others in a positive, cooperative way than in an adversarial one, but only because it’s generally more constructive or profitable. In other words, because it makes logical sense, not because it “feels” good.
Emotions are suspect, because they change with our moods. Love, anger, sympathy, fear, are all merely chemical changes that we interpret subjectively. We’re “happy” when things are going well, “sad” over losses and “angry” when things go badly for us. Emotions allow us to be swept away by life, reacting to things instead of taking responsibility for ourselves.
An emotional outlook allows us to blame others for “making us mad,” or “making us happy,” when only we can do those things by the way we interpret facts and circumstances. Emotion is an unreliable and unstable indicator, because feelings are fleeting and transitory. The logic of rational thought is intractable and definite.
Still, we all have emotions. There is no such thing as a completely logical human. We’re all effected by emotions. Logic just allows us to control our emotions and most importantly, our reactions to them. Some of us generally do a better job of that than others, and all of us vary in our ability to control our emotions at different times.
Rationalism (reliance on logic) is the hard, deliberate path of living, while emotionalism (reliance on feelings) is the easy, undisciplined one. It takes work to think things out. The nicest sounding, most “helpful” plan isn’t necessarily the best one. It takes rational analysis to see that most emotional appeals lead to unworkable dead ends.
Deconstruction's disdain for Western rationalism is most likely rooted in a fear of logic...a fear of the harder path and the desire to embrace the path of least resistance. "If it feels good, do it."
Which brings us back to our beginning - FEAR, the most corrosive and dangerous human emotion. Fear can paralyze us, or enrage us against imaginary oppression - it’s often ourselves holding us back, not others. Fear can spark us to fight or to run, but the one thing that fear doesn’t allow for, is thought.
But all fear is irrational, because in the end, what’s there to be afraid of? Death?...Failure? Don’t fear failure, just remember to get back up, and don’t fear death, because it doesn’t do any good. We’re all dying anyway.
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jmk444
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Member: J Michael Kearney
Location: New York, N.Y.
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About Me:
Staten Island born fireman (South Bronx) and I write - occasionally coherently.
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