Failure

The Fool’s Tool

I finally broke down and started listening to this YA fantasy series that Amazon Audible had been shoving in my face for months. “Mark of the Fool”—imperfect, but with a premise so interesting it’s had me thinking about life (and failure) in ways I didn’t expect.

The protagonist, Alex Roth, receives what everyone considers a joke of a gift but might actually be the universe’s most honest. His divine mark floods him with memories of every failure he’s ever experienced whenever he tries to use magic, engage in combat, or call upon divine powers. The mark overwhelms him with his own inadequacy, past mistakes, and humiliating defeats—a relentless replay of everything he’s ever screwed up—and forces a fresh, new failure.

But here’s where it gets interesting: Alex doesn’t accept his assigned role. While the mark bars him from the traditional paths to power, he studies those failures obsessively. He finds unconventional methods to operate in the realms he’s been locked out of—complex, roundabout, “fool-proof” routes that the other heroes would never consider because they don’t need to. He has to step out of the lane assigned to him by the god he worships in order to follow a higher path.

The other four heroes receive seemingly perfect gifts—pure benefits with no setbacks. They can grow into their roles with ease, becoming the warrior, the mage, the saint, and the leader that ancient prophecy demands. These powerful gifts keep them locked solidly into their assigned positions precisely because of how easy the path is. They’re given these marks to defeat the Ravener, an enemy who revives in a century-long cycle, rebooting this ancient ritual over and over again. The fool essentially acts as a servant for the other heroes.

Alex challenges that cycle with his unique approach to failure and his refusal to let anybody but himself decide who he is and what he can do.

It’s fiction. Fantasy, even. But it’s also one of the most accurate descriptions of how consciousness actually works that I’ve ever encountered in writing. Period.

The World Full of Unmarked Fools

Because here’s what I actually see when I look around: a world full of fools who don’t even realize it. Not because we’re stupid—but because we’ve been so thoroughly conditioned by how we’re taught to handle failure that we don’t even know our true potential for success.

This world is constantly telling us to ignore our failures while simultaneously shoving them in our faces at every opportunity. We worship at the altar of corporations—these massive, faceless entities that promise us fulfillment through consumption, security through obedience, and meaning through productivity. They serve as a direct parallel to the Church of Uldar in Alex’s world, the institution that grants divine marks and assigns roles and tells everyone exactly who they’re supposed to be.

And like the fools of ancient Thameland, we avoid everything we’re meant to fail at. We focus on propping an upper class by perpetuating a system that keeps us locked in servitude. We stay in our lanes. We accept our assignments. We don’t question the cycle because questioning it seems impossible, impractical, or insane.

The only way to end this servitude is by building a new path. Like Alex. Like every fool who’s ever looked at their supposed limitations and said, “Fuck that. Watch me find another way.”

But first, we have to be willing to see our failures clearly. Study them. Let them teach us what the system never will.

The Failure We Refuse to See

I spent years angry at a world full of people who couldn’t possibly be as obtuse as they appeared. Surely, I thought, they had to see the obvious failures staring them in the face. They couldn’t not understand that the systems aren’t working, the promises are lies, and the whole structure of our world is built on a foundation of denial.

Yet, over the years I’ve learned something that breaks my heart and opens it simultaneously: we are all very willfully ignorant. We choose not to see, because seeing the truth in a world built of lies challenges our entire concept of what reality is.

Yes, we’ve been conditioned. The systems we’re born into shape how we see and what we’re taught to ignore. But conditioning isn’t destiny. Every day we choose—actively choose—to accept what we’ve been taught rather than question it. We feel the dissonance. That nagging sense that something’s wrong, that the promises don’t match reality, and that we’re participating in something that’s hurting us. We all feel it, deep down. But feeling it and acknowledging it are two different things, and most of us choose not to acknowledge it because acknowledgment demands action. It demands we examine our complicity. It demands we consider alternatives we don’t know how to imagine. So we choose the comfort of the familiar failure over the terror of the unknown. That’s what makes it willful—not that we’re consciously deciding to be ignorant, but that we’re consciously deciding not to look closer when everything in us knows we should.

This refusal to see failure is everywhere once you start looking. We participate in election cycles that objectively prove politicians don’t legislate in their constituents’ best interests, yet we show up to vote as if this time will be different. We watch infrastructure crumble—bridges we drive over daily, systems we depend on—and treat the decay as background noise rather than urgent crisis. We poison our bodies with processed foods and chemical-laden products designed to make life “easier,” then turn to medicine to treat symptoms instead of causes. Each of these failures is obvious, documented, and experienced directly by millions. Yet we’ve collectively chosen not to see them clearly, because seeing would demand we acknowledge our complicity and imagine alternatives we don’t know how to build. The comfortable lie beats the terrifying truth every single time.

Polishing Poison

There’s a new age approach to failure that’s become ubiquitous: the belief that nobody should ever have to feel bad, so we only use positive words and feed people affirmations. We reframe “negative” situations as positively as we can, ensuring nobody has their feelings hurt. We see this in corporate culture with its “growth opportunities” instead of failures, in self-help circles with their relentless positivity, in parenting advice that warns against ever letting children experience disappointment.

This isn’t compassion. It’s another form of failure-avoidance, just dressed up prettier. Instead of acknowledging that we failed and examining why, we’re taught to spin the narrative until the failure disappears into comfortable language. The result is the same as ignoring failure outright: we never learn from it. We never grow. We just get better at lying to ourselves about what actually happened. This is spiritual cowardice dressed up as kindness, and it’s poisoning our ability to face reality clearly enough to change it.

We don’t want to face the failures in ourselves because it’s painful to face the truth. It can be heartbreaking to see yourself as a “bad” person or to acknowledge you’re not good enough. When I catch myself reacting poorly to my daughter’s behavior, taking a tone that hurts her feelings when all I’m trying to do is teach her to be better, it tears me apart. The idea of being the reason she’s crying is an unfathomable hell to me—and that’s saying a lot, because I’ve been through more hells than I can count for more time than there actually is.

But I have to acknowledge when I fail her. I have to be willing to see that it’s not her fault I’m getting frustrated with something she’s doing—it’s entirely my own. I’m the adult. I’m supposed to be the one who knows better. And it’s my responsibility to see that.

When I take that tone and hear her voice change, when I see her little face shift from joy to confusion to hurt—it feels like something has shoved a hand inside me and is wrenching out my heart. I’m feeling every bit of the hurt she’s experiencing. The betrayal of trust. The confusion. The fear. They’re all reflected back at me.

And I repair it by apologizing. Not some bullshit hug and an “I’m sorry” muttered while moving on to the next thing. A full acknowledgment of what I did wrong along with a statement of how I will improve. Every single time. Because that’s what we all need to do every time we fail: acknowledge it, feel it, and commit to doing better.

This is the practice. This is what love actually looks like.

The Greatest Lesson I Never Learned

When I was finishing first grade, my elementary school asked if I wanted to skip second grade entirely and jump into third. At that point in my life, I’d already learned how much other people didn’t appreciate my personal successes. If the kids my age didn’t appreciate me outshining them, how would the older kids react?

Lacking the conviction to jump into such a terrifying position, and not having any adults in my life willing to help push me toward the proper choice, I decided to hold myself back and progress through school at the same rate as all the other kids.

This was my first great failure in life, and the only one I regret to this day.

I don’t regret this simply because I view it as failure—a failure at attempting something difficult would have taught me volumes. I regret it because I chose not to fail. I chose not to try. I robbed myself of the growth that comes from facing something terrifying and discovering what I was capable of, regardless of the outcome. Every other failure in my life has taught me something invaluable, but this one? This one taught me nothing except what it feels like to let fear make my decisions for me. That’s the failure that haunts me—not any of the ones where I tried and fell short, but the one where I never tried at all.

After that, life steadily got worse. I resented everyone around me for wasting my time, despite the decision that I had made. I made sure people around me felt stupid, including teachers. I had no qualms about rubbing it in everybody’s faces that I was better than them at anything and everything. I made it a point to prove how much better I was, and all it ever did was piss people off—especially because I did it by putting in the absolute bare minimum of effort needed to exceed their results.

If you’re willing to bust your ass to be the best, people typically admire your effort. But if you do even less than them just to prove that what they’re doing isn’t difficult, you get the opposite reaction.

I don’t bring this story up because it’s relatable—in fact, I know it’s extremely unrelatable in all ways but one: the truth of me having not even made an attempt at accomplishing something I was afraid of that seemed overwhelming.

This is the ultimate failure, and the only form of failure that can’t be applied to success. The only failure that doesn’t benefit you is the one you never attempt.

Failure as Salvation

This world may use failure to put you down, but it’s made to help you rise.

When my first marriage fell apart, I played the victim hard. I wallowed in self-pity, convinced that I’d been wronged, that she was the problem, and the universe had dealt me an unfair hand.

After my ex had some time to recover from the trauma of the relationship and the breakup, she was finally able to voice how I had made her feel. When I actually listened—really listened, without defending or explaining or justifying—I had to face a truth that shattered me: I had become an oppressive force in her life. I had failed to be the husband I believed I was.

Accepting that failure allowed me to see myself in a light I never had before. It gave me an opportunity for growth that was unimaginable beforehand. And none of it could have happened if I didn’t acknowledge that failure. If I hadn’t listened to her when she was finally ready to talk. If I hadn’t been willing to sit with the excruciating reality that I was the villain in her story.

That acknowledgment—that willingness to face my own failure—became the doorway to every good thing that has come to me since.

We Need Failure

The greatest innovations of all time have always come out of necessity, and that necessity has always been born of failure. Failure to keep the Nazis from taking over Europe and killing millions in the process. Failure to keep people alive from disease. Failures to travel to a destination safely.

If we didn’t fail, we would never improve, because there would be nowhere for us to g(r)o(w).

Looking at today’s world demonstrates what happens when an entire culture refuses to acknowledge the importance of failure: the entire machine fails. Not spectacularly. Not all at once. But slowly, insidiously, as we pretend everything is fine while the foundation crumbles beneath our feet.

We’re failing at democracy while calling it politics. We’re failing at health while calling it healthcare. We’re failing at truth while calling it “truth.” We’re failing at love while calling it relationships. We’re failing at consciousness while calling it scientific progress.

And the worst part? We know it. Deep down, we all know it. But we don’t want to say it out loud because that would mean we’d have to do something about it.

I know what you’re thinking: this sounds terrifying. And you’re right—it is. Because the fear that keeps people locked in these patterns isn’t abstract. It’s the very real fear of losing the comfortable lives we have. We live in a system that provides easy access to necessities and luxuries. The monetary price is often within reach, even though we increasingly have to stretch ourselves too thin to keep up with the demands the system places on us just to play our assigned roles.

But the actual price—the one we don’t talk about—is our freedom to discover who we truly are.

The Fool’s path is punished. Society derides those who step outside their lanes, who question the cycles, who refuse their assignments. You’ll face ridicule, resistance, isolation. People will think you’re crazy for walking away from “perfectly good” opportunities that are slowly killing you. The system is designed to make deviation painful because deviation threatens the system’s continuation.

Here’s what I’ve come to understand though: we don’t have a choice anymore. We’ve played every card in the deck and failed repeatedly. The bridges are crumbling. The promises are empty. The comfortable lies are becoming obviously deadly. We’re in the process of collapse, and pretending otherwise just means we’ll be blindsided when it finally gives way completely.

Now it’s time we learn from those failures and play our final card: the fool. Not because it’s safe, but because it’s the only path left that might actually lead somewhere new.

The Practice of Radical Acknowledgment

Here’s what I’ve learned through my own journey with failure, through the spectacular collapses and quiet defeats that have shaped me into The Fool I both am and am becoming:

Acknowledge. Feel the full weight of what you’ve done or failed to do. Don’t minimize it. Don’t spin it. Don’t immediately jump to how you’ll fix it. Just see it clearly, even if it breaks your heart to see.

Accept. This happened. You did this or didn’t do this. It’s real. It’s part of your story now. Sit with that reality without trying to escape it through blame, justification, or other sorts of bypassing.

Plan. Not vague promises to “do better.” Specific, concrete commitments about what you’ll do differently next time. Then—and this is the most crucial part—follow through on those commitments when the next opportunity arises.

This is the practice. It’s simple but not easy. Especially not when you’re doing it in real-time, with real stakes, with people you actually love watching to see if you mean what you say.

It’s the only way forward that actually works. The only way.

The Invitation

Being The Fool, failure glares at me. I see it everywhere, hiding behind words and actions that most people think are “just the way it is.” It haunts me.

But here’s what I’ve discovered: failure is The Fool’s Tool, and The Fool is the only one brave enough to use it. The Fool is the one who steps off the cliff not knowing if they’ll fly or fall. The Fool is the one who tries things they might fail at. The Fool is the one who acknowledges their mistakes instead of hiding them.

The Fool is the only one who actually learns anything.

You’re afraid of failure because you don’t know how to face it, embrace it, and grow from it. You’ve been taught that failure is evidence of inadequacy instead of the very mechanism through which adequacy is built.

But…think about learning to talk. You babbled nonsense. You mispronounced words. You failed to communicate clearly for years before language finally clicked. Then there’s learning to walk. You fell. Constantly. You failed at every single attempt until suddenly you didn’t. And nobody—not one person—looked at you as a toddler and said, “Well, you failed at walking today. Maybe you should just give up and crawl forever.”

Somewhere along the way, we forgot this fundamental truth: failure is how we learn everything worth knowing.

We’ve all been marked by this world, whether we realize it or not. Every time you try to succeed within the broken systems—climbing corporate ladders that lead nowhere, chasing wealth that never satisfies, seeking validation from institutions designed to keep you small—you’re flooded with reminders of inadequacy. The system makes sure you feel every failure when you try to win its rigged game.

What happens when you step outside those assigned lanes though? When you try something unconventional and experiment with paths the system never told you existed, when you’re willing to fail forward into growth on your own terms? That’s when you discover what you’re actually capable of. That’s when success becomes possible, because you’re no longer playing by rules designed to keep you stagnant.

The question is: are you willing to try?

Are you willing to acknowledge the failures you’ve been hiding? To accept the truth of your complicity in systems that aren’t working? To plan specific actions that might actually create change, even if you might fail at them?

Are you willing to be The Fool and adventure into unknown realms?

Because here’s what I know after a lifetime of spectacular failures and the growth they’ve opened me up to: the only failure that can’t teach you anything is the one you never attempt.

Everything else? That’s just the universe letting you know where to grow next.

Failure is waiting to show you who you’re capable of becoming.