Hesam Ipakchi

Failing does not mean understanding failure

Have you ever tasted failure? It is unlikely that anyone would answer no to this question. We have many stories to tell about experiencing failure and being the loser; yet having numerous stories of failure does not in itself mean that we have ‘thought about’ failure. Even repeated experiences of failure do not necessarily make a person more reflective about it; someone may have lived through many failures precisely because they have never thought about failure.

Failure is a matter for thought because it is one way in which our relation to the world around us manifests itself. We cannot point to a fixed, static thing outside ourselves and say: ‘This thing is called failure.’ What we experience as ‘failure’ is different from the pine tree opposite the front door or the thin cat with white and yellow fur in the courtyard; it is therefore not something we can point to as an external object. We cannot point beyond ourselves and say: ‘Look! This object is called failure.’ Failure is our ‘relation’ to things and activities, and it is precisely for this reason that it can be a subject of phenomenological inquiry.

Another aspect that calls us to think about failure is the element of ‘time’. Failure is not a static, frozen phenomenon; it unfolds within lived temporality. Someone who has not passed an examination has failed when the results are announced; but if, over time, that same setback becomes the occasion for finding a way into a more appealing course of study and a better university, does their experience of ‘failing the examination’ and ‘failure’ still have its original meaning? Or consider someone who has been turned down at a job interview, but for whom that very event becomes a passage to a better job in more favourable circumstances: does the event still count as ‘failure’ for them in the same way as before?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I myself had to take greater precautions than others for medical reasons, and this necessity became the occasion for a change in the direction of my career. Before then, I had a well-established professional position that suited me. As a legal director, I had to attend numerous meetings, and my working calendar was filled with intensive negotiations. As the conditions of lockdown grew more demanding, and I had no choice but to avoid gatherings, it was no longer possible to continue along that path. So, after two decades of sustained work, I stepped away from that profession. Is ‘failure’ the name for this event? Yes: it could have been, and can still be, a failure.

Yet that same event created an opportunity to return to the research and study that had always remained on the margins of my life. After that, a different Hesam was born and began to live; and I have now moved so far from that former world that many of those I spend time with today may not know that I once worked in another profession and studied law. Now I ask myself again: was ‘failure’ the name for that event? The answer can still be ‘yes’, followed by a ‘but …’; or we may no longer regard it as failure at all.

This is why I say that failure can change over time and take on a new meaning, without denying the reality of the pain it caused when it occurred. I am careful here not to use ‘subsequent success’ to cancel out ‘failure’ and make it disappear. The point of the example is that an experience of failure can remain a failure, yet no longer carry its former meaning. Failure, then, is temporal and continues to unfold.

Let us take all these examples as preliminary steps towards the statement: ‘Failure is a matter for thought.’ Thinking here means neither a lexical exploration of words, nor a nostalgic revisiting of memories, nor giving speeches and motivational talks to help us hurry past it; rather, it means allowing the experience of failure itself to appear. Our usual way of responding is to conceal failure, deny it and rush past it; this very approach becomes a veil that prevents us from seeing and hearing the truth of failure. Perhaps, if we attend to it phenomenologically, we can allow it to speak with composure and in silence, without having to cry out or grow restless. If we were to hear the voice of failure properly just once, it might no longer need to summon us to listen through repeated cries of anguish.

To be continued …