In a world where everyone curates their entire life for public viewing, we seem to have miraculously lost the ability to suck at something. I was reminded the other night what failure looks like, and it messed me up initially — it was genuinely upsetting. As I thought about why it bothered me so much, I realized I’d lost touch with how beautifully humbling a good old-fashioned fuck up is. Not everything we do is going to be our best, every time. Part of everyone’s journey includes failure; so own it, learn from it, laugh about it if you can, and get on with the rest of your life.
Ever since I decided to take my weight gain into my own hands, I’ve found myself in the kitchen more. From the sounds of the grilling veggies to the smells of freshly ground spices, the whole experience puts me in a state of zen. I tell my little speaker robot to play some tunes, and I get down to cooking something fun.
Admittedly, cooking didn’t start as the meditative process it is now. In the beginning, cooking might as well have been an open call for anxiety and stress. I tasted everything to the point of not having much left to enjoy when I finished. But over time, I got good at it. From there, I learned to adapt — measure less and eyeball more. Now, I regularly pop into the kitchen with no idea what I’m going to make and wing entrees you might find in a restaurant, which is a good thing since it’s a future goal.
The other night was the complete opposite experience. I started strong — with wine in hand and tunes jamming, I got to work on what I thought would be a unique and delicious meal. I won’t go into the details because this isn’t a recipe story, but to put it nicely, the meal fucking sucked.
I was bummed, and my partner tried to cheer me up, telling me it honestly wasn’t bad, which I deflected and self-loathed… as you do. In reality, the meal was simply bland. And compared to the meals I usually make, this attempt might as well have been prepared in a dumpster by an infant. At least that was what I told myself — we really are our own worst critics.
Talk about a drama queen, right? Why would I let something so seemingly insignificant bother me so much? This question nagged at me, but I realized it was because of the lofty expectations I imposed on myself.
We model our thoughts of success by what we see from others. And in a world fueled by the perfection we share on social media, anything less doesn’t seem to be up to snuff. The truth is we only let a small piece of ourselves see the light of the social media world — we omit, edit, and filter out anything that resembles failure.
One dinner was terrible; that doesn’t make me a bad cook. It doesn’t say anything except that I am capable of failure, which is a good thing. If I allow myself to believe everything I do must scream perfection, I’m setting myself up for a life packed with letdowns. If I don’t allow myself to fail, I can’t expect to progress or learn anything new. If I emphasize all the wins that were the precursor to this “failure,” the minuteness of it all becomes apparent.
Our growth as people depends on screwing up. If we only accept perfection, then we see all of our shortcomings as failures instead of areas to improve. We don’t attempt anything outside of our comfort zone, so we don’t have to deal with falling short. We drown in a pool of self-inflicted criticisms instead of swimming in the excitement of creativity.
Our egos need a kick in the ass from time to time so that we can come back down to earth. It sucks in the moment, but the long-term effects outweigh the short-term discomfort. My ego took a pummeling, but I won’t let it keep me out of the kitchen. I accepted the failure, I learned something, I overcame the personal demons of self-doubt, and I look forward to continuing to fail in the future. The idea of perfection that invades our daily lives isn’t reality. The reality is we all fail, and what we do with that failure determines who we are.