One of the most overwhelming sources of human sadness is failure. Failure is a relative and subjective concept; once again, a product of the mind. You had a project; you calculated that the project would reach, let’s say, one hundred points, but once the project was completed, it turned out it only reached forty-five. This seems like a negative result to you. But in reality, it was simply lower than your expectations.
Feeling frustrated and humiliated, you begin to mentally reject that result, which was lower than expected. From this moment on, it begins to transform into failure, and the failure begins to pressure you—or, at least, you feel it that way. And as you feel that pressure, you resist it with all your soul, and the more you resist it, the pressure of failure becomes rapidly more oppressive. And thus, trapped in that vicious cycle, you can become a victim of profound personality disturbances.
And from there is born the anguish (angustia), which means to feel narrow, constricted (angosto), squeezed. But wake up, my brother; it is not failure that squeezes you; it is you who are squeezing yourself against failure with your mental aversion. That which was initially just a result lower than your calculations, by force of mulling it over in your head, you gradually turn into a nightmare that shames and saddens you.
It is foolishness. Wake up and flee the fire.
Once you have put in all your effort, the fight is over and all is done. Wisdom and common sense tell us that it is foolishness to waste time on lamentations, banging your head against the indestructible walls of accomplished facts. The effort depends on you, but the results do not depend on you, but rather on an imponderable series of causalities.
Put all your passion and energy into life’s battle; let the results be, and remain in peace—a peace that will come once you have detached yourself from the results. If the results do not depend on you, it is madness to live oppressed, humiliated, and ashamed by the specter of failure.
What is done is done.
It is useless to cry and lament, wasting energy uselessly. Be humiliated? For nothing. Be ashamed? Of nothing. Be saddened? For nothing. Leave the past to oblivion, and tomorrow, continue life’s battle with the fullness of your energy
Taken from the book: “The Art of Being Happy,” Chapter II, subheading: “The Past Time” by Father Ignacio Larrañaga.
