The Great Failure Questions

I'm having dinner with one of my friends this weekend and we strike up a conversation about the happiness project. "So, what is it?" she asks me, "I haven't had time to read your blog." I start explaining the Happiness Project book, how it's one woman's personal project to make herself happier and find fulfillment through resolutions and months dedicated to themes like "work" and "relationships." But then I start to explain that while Gretchen Rubin's ideas are amazing, I'm not exactly doing the same thing. My friend wanted to know why. I didn't have the heart to tell her.

See, Gretchen never failed during the project, except when the project was to "embrace failure." She started her project knowing exactly what she needed to do in order to be happy, and it made her happy.

I, on the other hand, have only a vague sense of what I have to do in order to be happy-- and more often than not, once I try it out, I either a) fail the first time around or b) realize that what I thought would make me happy doesn't after all.

Does that just mean I'm young?

Maybe. But I also think I just plain disagree with the book. It seems like a stretch to me to expect someone to know what will make them happy right off the bat, and then to never fail (or almost never fail) to achieve it. I'm constantly telling myself, okay, this week I will do better. Last week, I was a horrible putzer. BUT, I putzed (i.e. played on my computer, watched movies I didn't need to and generally did unproductive things) less than I did the week before. This week, hopefully, I will hardly putz at all.

I'm not concluding (like Gretchen did) that failure is integral to happiness. She had to embrace failure at work in order to not be afraid to try new things. That's not my problem (well, it sort of is, but that's not what I'm talking about here). Instead, I'm deciding that failure is integral to life and we have to accept it in order to be happy, because let's face it, we're never going to escape it. Once we fail, that's when we get to ask ourselves the GREAT FAILURE QUESTION # 1: Can I change it? If I can, then I will try and try and try until I succeed-- provided the answer to the GREAT FAILURE TO QUESTION #2 is yes. GREAT FAILURE QUESTION #2: Does it matter that I failed?

If the answer to Great Failure Question #1, or #2 is no, then we have to accept failure and find a way to move on with our lives. I suppose in that sense, that is the moment when Gretchen would say we need to embrace failure. But, I argue that until we reach that moment, continuing to ask ourselves these two questions will lead to great happiness--the euphoria in the moment that we finally succeed at something we never have before... well, I can't wait to know what that feels like.