Twinn Swan

To embrace, and I mean to truly embrace, the failure of all your efforts is to understand what it means to be a fragile and fallible human. It is to allow the Universe to help and to guide us. It is to allow others to see us at our most vulnerable. It is to shine a light–a torch if you will–in the places where we are most in need. It is to say to another human being, I need you. I appreciate you. I am glad that you are here and that I am not alone in this.

For the person who is experiencing a victory, it may not always feel like it; for those around you may not be there to celebrate the occasion. Rather, they may behave like crabs in a bucket. They have a vested interest in keeping you small; in keeping things as they were; in pretending that the victory never ever happened at all.

We may choose to see success as a position of strength and failure as a position of weakness, but I personally would not be so quick to reach any such fundamentalist conclusion. There is something far more nuanced taking place. There is the sense that failure is making room for a new opportunity. There is the understanding that success may well lead to a terrible downfall in the future.

Are people going to be happy for you when you reach the peak of that mountain? Are people going to uplift you when you are down in the dumps?

In whatever state they find you, there is something that drew that person to you. Perhaps, in that moment, you needed someone who could heal you. Perhaps, in yet another moment, you had to be left on your own so that you knew who would not be onboard the new journey you would soon be embarking upon.

In either case, to pray for victory, is to defeat an enemy. Tell me, then, which enemy are you destined to defeat?