Coping with failure

This is the English translation of my essay published in the Korea Economic Daily, 18 September, 2020.

Nobody likes to fail in their private life or in business. Failure means loss. Loss of time, money, trust, face. And very often the complete loss of motivation and self-esteem. And failure hurts. But honestly, have you never failed? It may sound overly strict, but I believe if you have never dramatically failed, you have not lived. You have not fathomed the deepest and darkest corners of your existence where only complete and devastating failure can lead you. Complete failure strips you from everything and what is left is your true self. Failure is part of the human condition.

 In business, I experienced my greatest failure about 20 years ago when I almost sunk a fast-growing startup that I co-founded because I did not pay enough attention to the cashflow situation. I had to tell my 30 plus staff that I cannot pay their salaries and that we only would survive if our already overstretched credit line would be once again extended. I felt extremely lonely and helpless when facing my colleagues. I felt humiliated and naked to the skin. Fortunately, however, I was lucky to turn around the situation in the end. The company still exists today and is thriving, even after I left. In my private life, I also experienced many failures. Most of them related to how I treated, and was treated by, people I deeply loved.

We live in a world ruled by causal laws of nature. Bad things sometimes happen to us. But we also believe to be free in our decisions. This means that failure can be caused by both bad luck and by bad decisions. No matter what the cause of the failure is, in adaptation of a thought by Swiss philosopher and poet Peter Bieri, I would claim that failure can only be endured if you wrap it in a poetic form. In my times of shattering failure, I have found deep consolation and a great deal of self-motivation from two very different poems. Consolation I take from the poem “Autumn” by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926). The final lines of the poem read as follows: “We are all falling/This hand falls/And see the other ones; it is in them all/And yet there is One, who holds this falling/Endlessly, gently in His hands.” Perseverance and freedom are powerfully addressed in the well-known poem “Invictus” by the late Victorian English poet W. E. Henley (1849-1903). You might know the final two lines, as they have given hope to many great men: “I am the master of my fate/I am the master of my soul.” Rilke’s work tells me that, in the end, our existence may be part of a bigger plan outside of my control. Henley stresses the importance of my own responsibility, which is based on personal freedom in both good and bad times. Do you have poems which console and help you in failure?