It’s easy to dwell on what we don’t have. It’s even easier to dwell on the things we used to have that have since slipped from our grasp. However, that mindset is unproductive at best and toxic at worst. If we ever want to get to where we want to be, we cannot fixate on where we used to be, where we thought we would be at this point, or where we could be had the ball bounced differently. We must actively focus on how far we have come and the blessings we have accumulated during the journey.
At this time last year, I was on the verge of a breakdown. I was fortunate enough to have a job, but my employment there was always tenuous at best due to factors beyond my control. To make matters worse, the job was horrendously stressful. I was fearful for my future, for though I desperately wanted to move to another position at another school, I had no prospects. All I had ever met to that point was disappointment. I had to have knocked a thousand doors without a single one of them opening. My friends were all out of the picture due to factors such as work, location, relationships, or just plain growing up. My love life was in shambles. My sister had moved away and had gotten pregnant, and while I was happy for her, there was still a feeling of “woe is me” in my heart because nothing in my life was coming together. I feared that whatever potential I did have was on the verge of being wasted.
As you know by now, things turned around in my life. I work at a different job. I have a new car. I have a greater security in my friendships despite the fact that many of my friends still live at a considerable distance from me. I have made new friends as well. I have a niece that I absolutely adore. The love life didn’t exactly turn out as I had hoped, but doors closing led to a change in my mindset (so all in all, it’s a net gain).
You might have read everything to this point and asked yourself “Jakob, where are you going with all of this? Is there a point to this history lesson?” There is. I am thankful for my successes this year. I have done things that I would have never dreamed of accomplishing this year. But above all, I am grateful for my failures.
I have failed spectacularly and epically in the past year. I’ve made mistakes in virtually every facet of life. Some of them I can already laugh at myself for making. Others are a little more difficult to tackle. However, I take solace in the realization that I would not have succeeded had I not fallen. I obsessed in my love life. It left me with a steaming pile of nothing. That failure woke up a part of me that I did not know existed. Today, I no longer fear failure. I survived some pretty low depths. I may not always succeed. I’m going to make mistakes (though hopefully not the same mistakes as before). But failure does not and will not define me, and it will not end me.
For the first time in my life, I am living without a plethora of self-imposed deadlines. A significant portion of my frustration and dissatisfaction with life came from the idea that I had not reached the life checkpoints that I thought I should have arrived at by this point. I had all these things that I thought I would accomplish by the age of 30, and while I have put a dent into that list, many items still remain. If I don’t get to them, it’s not as if I no longer have the right to live. I’m young. I have time. Things will happen as they are supposed to happen.
I write all of that to implore you to be thankful this year, to take stock of what you do have and to find joy in your journey. I am thankful for that which I have accomplished, the people who have stayed by my side along the way, and for the failures that refined me and woke me up.
