Failed Dreams

The newspapers and media (social media, too) is full of anecdotes of people who dreamed big and succeeded. But nobody writes about the failed dreams. It is simple, perhaps, that people would not like to read about people who have failed. Or is it the media’s perception?

But despite these success stories, society as a whole does not want to emulate these people. What is the fear all about?

I was talking to one of my friends in an NGO, and she said, behind every success story, there are hundred failure stories, and thousands of horror stories. I asked her about the source, and she said, ‘no body ventured to write the first failure story, and the project has not been conceptualised since then’.

The other friend from the same school of thought, continued, looking in the void, ‘when you write your CV, you don’t mention that you’re fired from so and so organisation; it is full of your achievements.’

The group was now coming into a live discussion, and the third added, ‘look at those reports, and those are full of achievements and success stories. In the prelude, it is written that we have learnt from our failures and mistakes, and there is a full stop there. It is written as a humble style, and nothing more.’

Before the fourth could add, my first friend said, ‘it does not make business sense, dear. Look, if we were to write to the donors that we spent the money you had given but failed to give the results! The whole world would fall apart; the people, apart from thinking about their funding strategy, would term us as most imprudent.’ After a while, she added, only the fools tell about their failures and the whole world laughs at you.’

Is it an unwritten code, societal stigma, or something deeply inherent in an opaque community that mistakes and failures are to be canned-not open for discussion? If the failures are not put on the table, are not discussed, we would not be able to analyse them, and not know the reasons for their failures. The uncharted territory would remain uncharted.

Though failures are not listed, chronicled, eulogised, booked, and filmed-in short no money made through this exercise, the community knows that ‘behind every successful person there is a long list of unsuccessful people fading into the background colour. Is it true? Who knows!

But one thing is clear, failures terrifies you. If you jump a wall, break a leg (instead of the wall), the people might laugh at your broken leg (age is always reminded to you-if you are a child, it is too early to jump; if you are old, it is too late; and if you are young, ‘don’t you have anything else ‘fruitful’ to do than this at this age?)

Does that deter you? I mean, the supposition that people could be laughing at you in case of failure? So what? What if the people laugh? Does not your school/college teach you about the emotional intelligence? Family should be the right place, and friends the next where this teaching should be done. But either it is not (done) or the opposite environment is created. If so (creation of an enabling environment), the family, relatives and the friends need to nurture dreams that have all the potentials to be grand failures.

And one day we should write about failed dreams, and what went wrong. And instead of panicking, sulking, and all those negative emotions, we should be raising a toast to the failed dreams, not because they have failed, but because the person dreamed of the impossible (factors like resources, capacities, ahead of time etc), failed and the story was documented, family and friends said, ‘it is okay, it is no big deal that your dream has failed; you tried, but more than that, you dreamed of impossible, and no ordinary mortal would have dreamed of that!”