You will find hope in failure

Here me now, failure will come to you. It will wrap its arms around you and hold you tight.

Sometimes more than others. Sometimes, more visibly than times before. But failure will be a lifelong friend.

It will not heed your avoidance. When you don't answer its knock on the front door, it will come in away. It has a key, you see. And even when you try to take it back, it knows where you keep the spare. And when you do away with spare, it will come through the window, the chimney, it will walk through the walls as if it's a ghost, it will find its way in.

Because, as it happens, failure doesn't visit you to torment you. It doesn't see itself as a foe, or a bully, or an enemy.

It's not aware that it brings with it heartache and pain, that it creates fear and worry, because, at its heart, failure sees you as a friend. A confidant.

Sometimes, even, a soulmate, whispering secrets to you it doesn't share with anyone else in quite the same way.

Failure has been demonised and attacked. It's been misunderstood and unappreciated. If ever there was an entity that's been relegated to a position and a place that it doesn't belong, failure is it.

When it was created and commissioned to do its sacred work in the world and in the lives of those it will embrace, it never imagined the shame that would be ascribed to it. Failure, from the very beginning, was only ever meant to be a grace, a message, a teacher. A beacon on the path. A wise elder. A keeper of sacred truth.

Failure's mission has always been to wake up those it visits, and in its own and sacred way, bring life and light to the path ahead. See failure now as it shakes its head in bewilderment; “why am I not received?” It often says to itself. “I come with love.”

Listen, it knows. It knows that sometimes its message can be difficult and challenging, but only in the way that birth and healing is difficult and challenging. It doesn't seem to matter what it does to soften the blow, failure feels the rejection and the denial and the hate. But it comes anyway because it loves you.

Perhaps, next time, dear one, when failure comes, why don't you open the door willingly. Why don't you allow it to hold you as you cry.

I know it will take all the courage and vulnerability you can muster to accept it and let it in, but failure knows this and will match your grace and more so, if you allow it. Lead it to the comfortable chair, where it can linger a while and tell you its stories.

Lean in and listen.

Make it a cup of tea, and laugh at its jokes. The more you embrace it, the longer it will be between visits. But the irony of that is, that the more you see it as a friend, not a foe, the more your heart will warm and open when it knocks on your door.

Mindful Prompt: Failure comes to you as grace. So let in. Let it teach you its wondrous and compassionate lessons. Wish it well as it leaves, and learn and grow and wait until it graciously visits you again.

Continued in the series "The Obstacle Is The Path", this week with a subscription in the App.

Written by Liz Milani.
Instagram: @thepracticeco