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What Does it Mean When you Fail?
Does failure even exist?
What exactly do people mean when they “you failed”?
Years ago, I was with my friend at the bioluminescent lagoon kayak tour outside of Fajardo, PR. The guide finished explaining the lifejacket basics and then asked the group, “What’s the worst that can happen?”
“Death!” I blurted out. As was usually the case when I try to be funny, there was awkward silence. My friend giggled.
“That’s pretty much the worst case scenario with anything.” She said.
Death is the ultimate failure. It’s a situation that is easy to see if someone or something failed. That’s our baseline then–death! You’re either dead, or you’re not.
At it’s root, it’s also a physical problem. Physical failures are binary.
What is harder to figure out are the meta-physical failures–the failures of the mind.
Definitions
What is the precise definition of failure? Let’s look at a couple of definitions.
From Oxford Dictionary:
noun1
• an unsuccessful person, enterprise, or thing
And here’s the Urban Dictionary’s definition:
