goals

Failure is important; if you are a trapeze artist.

If every move was a guaranteed success there would be no tension, no excitement no show. No need to hold your breath as you wait to see if their outstretched arms will be received by the impossibly distant, saving arms of another.

When we think about failure in our own lives it can be easy to think about it in the same black and white terms. You either win or lose. I prefer to think about failure not in terms of what has been lost but instead what has been learned.

I licked my thumb to turn the page of my book, glancing up for the first time in a while to enjoy my surroundings.  Mount Kilimanjaro sat proudly in the backdrop of my hotel, dragonflies hovered over the swimming pool and periodically nosedived for a drink. The sun was moving in the sky, stealthily stealing the shadow over my lounger and getting alarmingly close to my chilled beer.

When I reached what looked like the centre of the bridge, I tentatively placed both my hands on the cold metal bar, leaning into it, to peer meekly over the edge. I’d been told by my tour guide, in his jovial Slovenian-English, that the drop was ‘only’ 10 metres. I was sceptical, it looked much higher. Much higher than a few minutes before when I’d eagerly raised my hand as volunteer to be the first to jump. Glancing back to the crowd standing on the embankment, I could see they were shouting something through the makeshift megaphones they had created with their hands. They could be words of encouragement or impatience I couldn’t tell, any sounds they were making had been stolen by the winds.

I must be crazy for trying this, I snorted mockingly at myself and gently shook my head.  I propped up my chin with my hand and felt a rogue forefinger move into position over my mouth, apparently concerned it might say something compromising, if left unsupervised.

It was of course the risk that I needed to take.

I coaxed my focus away from an empty daydream and turned my desk clock to face me, 03.43am. I sighed. Fourteen hours until my thesis deadline. I’d been awake for 2 days straight, finishing the references and drafting a conclusion, finding myself more frequently than not, held hostage by micro sleeps. My thoughts falling adrift for a moment, seemingly, only to discover that I had been staring into space, my mind lost in a vacant vacuum, no recorded thoughts, for nearly half an hour at a time. I wondered to myself if this is what it feels like for Buddhist monks when they achieve a deep meditative state. Have I accidentally mastered the art of meditation through my catatonic fatigue?