The Right to Fail
Since I woke up early this morning, as usual, I’ve felt that my mind woke up before my body—tired from sleep and in need of more. I quickly recalled all the unsettling events of yesterday, but also remembered the dinner gathering I hosted for some friends I hadn’t seen in a long time to welcome a friend back to Riyadh, and how much I enjoyed the evening.
This mix of emotions—joy intertwined with small annoyances piling up, today’s commitments, tomorrow’s demands, family and work responsibilities, and the new venture I’ve built myself—brought a wave of thoughts. That venture requires double the effort, persistence, positivity, a cheerful demeanor, planning, decision-making, convincing, managing, self-discipline... All of it rushed into my mind.
I remembered it all, along with some achievements I convinced myself were successes and progress in the right direction (though they’re not—just self-persuasion to keep moving forward). I also recalled the failed attempts or those that led to no clear or memorable outcome. All this thinking hit me within the first minute of waking, as if the subconscious mind had been reflecting on everything all night, and perhaps always does.
This flood of thoughts left me with a headache, a lump in my throat, and a tightness in my chest.
I ignored all of that (or thought I did) and began my morning pondering how to start an article about celebrating failure. I planned to discuss the importance of failure in achieving success, but that positivity frustrated me—it reminded me that I’ve never truly succeeded at anything I set out to do in life. Every goal I’ve tried to reach, I’ve failed to achieve.
That doesn’t mean I haven’t accomplished things—there have been achievements—but I haven’t succeeded in the way I envisioned, and that in itself feels like failure. It’s true that I’ve reached milestones, conclusions, places, and goals I hadn’t initially aimed for. And there lies the paradox: I arrived at destinations I didn’t know I was heading toward.
That’s good, of course, but the joy of succeeding (outside of academic achievements) at something I poured all my energy and effort into has never materialized—and perhaps it never will.
That may seem pessimistic, perhaps, but it’s also a comforting reality. Not everything we try to succeed at will work out, but that doesn’t mean the world ends or that we shouldn’t celebrate along the way.
After three hours of waking up and attempting to face the day with positivity, I decided to embrace the feeling of failure that consumed my mind today—and celebrate it.
What does celebrating failure look like? I decided it meant acting like a failure and surrendering to it. I went back to bed and slept a little more. I resolved not to do anything today—no tackling the piled-up messages on my phone, no answering those dreadful emails.
I chose to accept and live out what my mind was telling me today: that I’m a failure. I decided to go along with it and see where it would lead. I figured it’s my right to be a failure today.
Honestly, there’s a certain relief in this decision. At the very least, it gave me the central theme for this article and its first message: failure is a right. The second message? How to celebrate it.
It’s now 2:30 in the afternoon. Most of the negative emotions I felt earlier in the day have faded because I gave my mind the time to sit with failure, listen to it, and let it run its natural course instead of fighting or resisting it.
After today’s experience, I’d like to revisit a new, and perhaps even positive, interpretation of the famous verse:
Man does not attain all his heart's desires for the winds do not blow as the vessels wish.
And here, the ships may settle in a place other than the intended destination—a reminder of the will of Allah, as encapsulated in the famous saying:
I want and you want to and do what God wants
In this, there is comfort and stability, which may allow us to celebrate failure. However, the key takeaway from today’s article is this: just as you carefully choose a day to celebrate any occasion to fully enjoy it, choose the day to celebrate failure with the same care, so you can experience it fully and let it take its natural course.
After that, place your trust in Allah and move forward toward what He has written for you.
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