On The Necessity Of Failure

Failure is the friend who never knocks, just let themselves in. They sit in the kitchen while you make coffee, watching as you spill sugar across the counter. They settle into the corner of your room as you scroll through emails, eyebrows raised when another rejection lands in your inbox. They don’t gloat. They don’t comfort you either. They just exist beside you, quiet, waiting for you to acknowledge them.

Because failure isn’t a villain. Not really. It’s just… there. Like the quiet hum of a streetlamp at night or the way rain smudges ink on a grocery list. You can’t avoid it, you can’t outrun it, so you might as well pull up a chair and ask what it wants, so you might as well pull up a chair and ask what it wants.

And what it wants is simple: for you to try. And for you to mess up. And then for you to keep going.

But if you look closer, if you dig through the layers of any success story, you’ll see the wreckage underneath. The band that played to empty bars before selling out stadiums. The author whose first book no one wanted. The artist who couldn’t afford real supplies and painted on whatever scraps they could find. Every win is built on a pile of failures, stacked haphazardly like a game of Jenga, threatening to topple at any moment.

But no one talks about that.

There will be moments—too many to count—when you’ll think about stopping altogether. When failure stops feeling like a lesson and starts feeling like a wall. When the rejections, the missed chances, the constant effort with no visible reward all pile up until you wonder if maybe this is the universe’s way of telling you to quit.

Maybe you weren’t meant to be a writer. Maybe no one will ever listen to your music. Maybe your art will never make it out of your bedroom. Maybe the thing you love most is the thing that will never love you back.

It’s easy to believe that.

I remember the last time I was invited to speak at an event. I told the audience that it was okay to not have everything figured out right away—that life doesn’t have to follow a strict timeline. I said that if you truly want something, you should go after it, even if nobody else believes in you. Even if your parents don’t approve. Even if you don’t have the means. You find a way. Because at the end of the day, no matter how much you suppress it, you will always be drawn back to what your heart desires.

And then another speaker disagreed with me. They said not everyone has the privilege to chase their dreams. That sometimes, life simply doesn’t allow it. They also argued that young people should set rigid goals for themselves: in five years, they should be at a certain place in their career; in ten years, they should have accomplished something specific.

And I disagreed (though only in my mind, because I didn’t see the point in arguing)

Not because having goals is bad, but because the pressure of a timeline makes you afraid of making mistakes. It tricks you into thinking that if you don’t hit a milestone by a certain age, you’ve failed. It stops you from exploring, from changing, from allowing life to push you in directions you never expected.

It makes you believe that failure is something to be avoided instead of something to be learned from.

But life doesn’t move in perfect, predictable steps. Sometimes, you take detours. Sometimes, you have to start over. Sometimes, what you thought you wanted at 20 doesn’t make sense at 25. If you chain yourself to a five-year plan, you don’t give yourself the freedom to grow. And if you don’t allow yourself to fail, you don’t allow yourself to learn.

I used to think failure was the end of something, a closing door. Now I think of it as a hallway—long, dimly lit, stretching out ahead with no clear destination. Each failure a flickering lightbulb, illuminating just enough to take one more step forward.

There was a time when a bad grade, a missed opportunity, a fumbled conversation could knock the breath out of me. Like I was made of paper, too thin to hold the weight of disappointment. But I’ve learned that failure doesn’t actually break you—it just changes your shape. Makes you sharper in some places, softer in others.

You stop fearing it after a while. Or at least, you stop letting it stop you.

Failure isn’t a dead end. It’s just proof that you are trying. That you are alive. That you care enough about something to risk looking like a fool. And there’s something beautiful about that, isn’t there? About caring enough to get it wrong a hundred times just for the chance to get it right once.

Fail in front of people. Fail alone in your room. Fail with your whole chest, with shaky hands and hopeful eyes. Let it hum in the background of your life like an old radio playing static. Let it sit with you at the kitchen table, across from your morning coffee, an uninvited but inevitable guest.

And then—when you’re ready—get up and try again.

Because failure isn’t here to ruin you. It’s just here to remind you that you’re becoming someone.