page forty-two: Fail Again, Fail Better

Failure and I go back a long way. We first met when I was nineteen.

And failure, I have learned, is a patient teacher. It returns at periodic intervals, like the proverbial bad penny, inviting us, challenging us to relate to it differently. This is what the Irish writer Samuel Beckett captured so perfectly when he wrote: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

I know this teacher intimately. What I could not have imagined when we first met was that my most crushing moment of shame and disappointment was not an ending.

It was an initiation.

Until then, my path had been seamless. From kindergarten onward, I was the one in the family who excelled and received recognition. Success came easily and, encouraged by the culture I grew up in, soon became second nature to me. My proud mother displayed my certificates and awards in a prominent place and showed them off to every visitor. But what had once seemed like a gift gradually became my identity. I not only enjoyed it as the youngest of three, happy to be holding my own against my older siblings, I needed it. It was my raison d'être.

And then I failed an examination.

It was the intermediate exam on my path to becoming a CPA in India, and it felt as though everything had fallen apart. I was crushed, ashamed, and completely undone. What hurt most was not the failure itself but the thought of having let my parents down. And beneath the shame, some fundamental questions arose. If I was not successful, who was I? What was my place in the world? What was my value?

These are not small questions. And I have since learned that they are not mine alone. Academic failure is only one among so many others — failed business ventures, relationships that did not last, and the countless plans we make and unmake along the human journey.

But something has changed in me over the years. My relationship with failure has evolved. The walls of resistance I had built against it have slowly crumbled, as I have softened into acceptance, even appreciation. I no longer see failure as a final verdict but as an invitation into a new journey.

The moments we most resist, the ones we wish had never happened, often carry within them the seeds of something far deeper and more meaningful. Its gifts are not always immediate, but they are enduring.

This does not mean we make failure the goal. Rather, as Krishna reminds us in the Gita, the true yogi is one who remains equally undisturbed by both failure and success. We are called to redefine both, to see them simply as two possible outcomes. Outcomes that reveal the state of things outside us, and never a statement about who we are.

Seeing outcomes as simply outcomes helps us to view life as a journey of growth and exploration, rather than a relentless chase for validation and certainty. The great teacher Pema Chodron once said, "Pain is not punishment, pleasure is not a reward." Tweaking her words, I would add: failure is not rejection, and success is not validation.

With the gift of hindsight, I find myself wondering: what if I had embraced that failure as a teenager differently? I might have chosen to explore new avenues rather than retreating into shame and sorrow. It is too late now to knock on doors that time has closed, but it is not too late to learn the precious lesson that failure is time to open up, not give up.

Over the years, sitting with students and individuals navigating their own moments of failure, I have seen this same transformation happen again and again. A failed business that became a doorway to a truer calling. A relationship that ended and slowly forged a deeper relationship with oneself. Plans that fell apart and made room for something better. 

What shifts in these conversations is not the facts of what happened, but the meaning we assign to them. We begin to see ourselves not as people defined by our failures, but as what we have always been: divine consciousness having a human experience.

This journey has also made me a more conscious parent. I work hard at resisting the temptation to label my children's efforts as success or failure in a way that could become their identity, as it once became mine. It is not easy. Our cultural values run deep, and the pull to measure, judge, and compare is powerful and often unconscious. Working through this has given me a far deeper compassion for my own mother and the world she was shaped by. She did the best she could with what she knew.

As we all do.

And grateful for a near lifetime of stumbling and rising, I have finally learned to try again, fail again, and fail better.