July 26

PATIENCE MONTH: DAY 26: “There is something good in all seeming failures. You are not to see that now. Time will reveal it. Be patient.” ― Sivananda Saraswati

If any group of people can relate to ‘seeming failures’, I am pretty sure it is us. I know I certainly do. The idea that we get to this place on a winning streak is ridiculous…and we all know it, eventually. The dismal failure in my spiritual life and my relationships with the world around me were great incentives for doing this work in the beginning. I have to really guard myself, to this present time, from judging what success and failure are and what they look like. Our cultural environment deems success as having a large amount of resources; homes, cars, the right clothes and partners, travel, etc. That is no longer my definition of success. I watch faces and see how people interact with others and with the world around them…especially the physical world of Nature. Those who I deem successful today are happy with themselves and their world. They have made peace with who they are and are not racing around trying to change things on the outside to feel better on the inside. They are not working themselves to death to be ‘better off’. These are not the same markings of success that most of the world will support. Then, too, there is the notion that there can be failure in any situation. Of course that isn’t so. It is like the idea of a mistake. There are not any…we all get to a dead end at times and have to retreat back the way we came and find another road. This is life. We are on the right path, but it will always end. Our culture has fostered the idea, which is not true, and which is something we should have let go of many years ago; that we are to stay in the same place for 30, 40, or 50 years. As we develop into a higher level of technological advancement, this is happening less and less frequently. Yet, we think we are to remain the same for many years at a time. How sad to watch someone feel like a failure because they do not remain in the same job and retire after 25 or 30 years. They have stifled all personal growth and development in doing this. Or those who remain in horrible and unhappy relationships because they believe they must do what their parents were forced to do. And they feel like dismal failures because they have accepted (quite blindly and without examining the falseness of this belief!) that marriage is ‘till death do us part’. Who says so? A cultural structure that does NOT know the journey each person is on. I cannot say that someone is more or less responsible for being a good citizen because they blindly accept cultural norms and standards that may not fit their actual path. I have met murderers who are some of the best people walking around today. And I have met good, solid, church-going folks with whom I cannot sit in the same room because their “rightness” is intolerant and hateful. So I do not judge with any level of ruler who is successful and who has failed. I believe the adage that ‘nothing happens by mistake in God’s world’ and it has continuously proven itself to me. Every time I have ever believed myself to be a dismal failure at something, I have been provided with an open door that was 10 times better than the thing I did not succeed at doing. This is my experience, over and over and over. I, therefore, have determined that I am totally and completely unqualified to know what that even means.