Skip to main content

Meaning of Failman

So… It’s been a bit.

And, if you have not read these before, hello. How are you? Hope you are doing well.

If you have not yet, I strongly encourage reading the posts titled “The Super Hero and Failman.” It will help you understand this particular post a little bit more.

So, without further adieu, I need to get on with it. I feel the need to explain those posts from a non-dramatized, real-world view. I need to kind of put myself out there, in hopes to help others, as I try to do with any of my posts, as well as give myself a little therapy.

A lot has happened, during and since that little story. To protect the innocent, what I will say is that there has been a bit of family drama in my life, and there was an event that happened, which I give a glimpse of in the first Failman post, that shook me to my core and broke me. I had a nervous breakdown. I was like a china shop that was destroyed in the worst hurricane ever known in human history. I had never felt so broken and useless. I was just about ready to give up on everything. I was ready to commit social suicide (not actual suicide) and walk away from everyone and everything in my life. I felt that all I was ultimately doing in my attempts to help those that I hold dear, I was actually hurting them more than helping them. I felt that it was a logical decision to remove myself from everyone, and never come back again, and maybe, just maybe, the world would be better off with this guy in their life. However, something happened.

What happened during this period of self-loathing and pity and at the height of my mental breakdown still surprises me, and makes it hard for me to talk to certain people (you know who you are if you are reading this). And, it happened with a touch. I grabbed my daughter’s hand, and the next thing I knew I was an observer in my own body, watching the events unfold as if I was a patron in a movie. Visions of the past, present, and future flashed, words that I did not understand fully were spoken (even though they were plain English). Calls were made, and spirits were felt. It was a hair raising and downright confusing experience for my family, my mentor and friend, and myself. When it was done, all I can say is that I slept, and then woke up knowing that something happened, but not remembering all the steps that took me there.

Since this strange episode, I moved into a new place with my family, and I am attempting to find who I am again. As the story states, my mind palace, which I had cultivated and filled with different things over the years was completely destroyed, and the darkness that I had harbored since childhood no longer haunts me, making me feel as though I am a poor excuse of a Dr. Jekyll. I am a semi-empty shell attempting to find who I am once again, and what my role on this planet is supposed to be. I am starting over and remaking all the rules, and as Mark Manson suggests with his book, “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck,” I am trying to choose the right things to give a f*ck about. I stand now at a fork in the road, and I have a choice. I can choose to take the low road, which is a well traveled and paved road that has a guaranteed ETA to my destination and known spots to stop and see along the way, or I can take the high road, which is a road that is rugged and treacherous and filled with unforeseen peril and excitement. Supposedly, there are some really cool things to see on that road, but many call them a tall tale. Only those that have traveled the road know the truth.

What I want you to consider from this and the story of the Super Hero and Failman is this: you are not succeeding until you are failing and managing those failures with your successes evenly. For every success or good deed or excellent outcome, there has to be a string of failures left in its wake. Success is the hero that we should all see as the villain it is, and failure is the villain that we should see as the hero of growth and forward movement. Success is a serial killer. Once you have achieved success, you have achieved a form of perfection that is fake and heartless. Those who have success have the money and the cars and the lifestyle that they want, sure. Many of them, who have chosen to live only with success, also have unhappiness, loss of privacy, and a false sense of self. Only those who know how to string in some failures and bad choices, and manage them correctly, seem to have the true happiness. They have learned what they should focus their attention on, and they never stop learning, because you have to fail to learn. If you think this is wrong, feel free to tell me how.

I still have not recovered for my little event, and I still wrestle with the thought that I am a burden to those in my life, but I feel a little bit more secure in where I am going to go next. It is going to take time to heal from what I feel is the biggest failure that I have committed to date, and understand where it puts me. I hope to be better and bring you along my journey, and hopefully bring you some thoughts to consider in your own life. Thank you for sticking with me, and good luck to you in your own world.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Super Hero and Failman

I’ve contemplated writing this now for a couple of months, if not my entire life. Even now, the fear of what I am about to write envelops me like a prickly blanket, its warmth compelling me not to do it. But I have been wanting to answer the questions that many who have met me have asked either out loud to others or quietly deep within their subconscious in that little space that sometimes escapes them as a part of their thoughts. What is that question? “What is with that guy?” For those who know me and read this, and are wondering what I am talking about, just know that I am about to give you a tour of the entryway into my psyche in the best way that I know how, which is in written form. For those who don’t know me and read this, I am about to give you a tour into the psyche of a tortured soul in hopes that at least one of you will use this as a lesson to avoid this trip to Hotel California, and work your ass off to find the love of yourself within yourself, and ask for the needed...

Today is a good day

One day a few weeks ago, I woke up in sheer terror. I had experienced what it was like to die. It was one of the most vivid dreams I had ever had in my life. The specific events of the dream apparently were not of grave importance, for I do not remember them as vividly as I do the events of other dreams. However, the feeling that I was left with upon the waking hour was important. I was supposed to learn a lesson here, and I think the message was received. Loud and clear.  Let me do my best to share this with you... In the dream, I lived in a house that looked similar to a childhood home from when I was in the last elementary school that I would ever attend. On the outside, it looked just like my current house (side thought: I wondered if it was maybe a T.A.R.D.I.S. at first since my current home is quite a bit smaller). I had just found out that I was terminally ill, and did not have very long to live. I do not believe that I had shared this with my family as of yet, beca...

Power

When my daughter was 5 years old, we had a discussion on power while we were heading to school. This was another chapter in a normal exchange between us, where she would ask me deep question about the world and life in general, and I would do my best explaining to her a view that could be as objective as possible. Sometimes my views were more subjective than objective, depending on the subject that we were talking about. On this particular day, it required a holistic approach, or at least the best that I could give.  The conversation started out with questions related to government. Admittedly, I have slept a few times since then, so I cannot say that I remember the conversation completely. What I do remember was that the conversation took a turn toward what power can do to people. I remember telling my daughter that great old phrase from Uncle Ben: "With great power comes great responsibility." My daughter didn't quite understand it, so I explained it.  I said, ...