The Art of Failing Beautifully

There is an absurdity to life that is hard to capture with words. There is something hidden in the small moments together and the lonely roads, in harmonious notes and defiant stands, in old friends and fresh tears. For some they remain hidden, but for others they shine bright amongst the coal. Like rains that soak cracked land, a minority of us stand enthralled. We fight for these sparks as if we were born of the desert. Poets work to put down words, painters bring form to space, and some simply move. With words spoken or sometimes unsaid, something is captured. Fickle and spritely, some small piece of beauty waits for the chance to find a home within the heart of man. One size does not fit all, and the few undertake a desperate quest for the ultimate reward, the living of life. In Walden, we have the distilled reflections of a naturalist. In Picasso, works that redefine the human understanding of art, emotion and beauty. Thoreau or Tennyson, Monet or Mozart, as viewers we simply bear witness to human attempts at wrangling incomprehensible beauty.

If this is a primal foundation of life, why aren’t all of us hanging Monet’s Lily’s on our bare walls? Why isn’t the Metropolitan Museum of Art booked until next summer? The answer is simple. As simple as it is formless to our minds. The very case I can make for this ascribed human need is wrapped inexorably with the experiences I, as the author, have lived. It is my college days touring art museums, my studies in medieval epic poetry and my walks among the library stacks. It is in the 3AM dorm room conversations and the subtle words of a friend. The beauty and terror of life is that my community and experience is only one of seven billion. Easy to say and easy to agree to, but can you truly conceptualize the magnitude of life? How do we know what it is like to live in Wichita, Kansas, rather than Atlanta, Georgia, or Newark, New Jersey? More than that, how about in Casalborgone, Italy? How about Newcastle, Australia? It is the height of human egocentrism to even imply we can grasp the depth of these lives across the world with merely a thought. Such arrogance, that despite a growing inability to connect with the rough fabric of our own lives, we might be able to grasp another’s so trivially.

But, sometimes, it is possible. There are times we can open a window to peer across vast tracks of land to the souls on the other side of the world. Yet, with such distance there is something lost in the journey, some granularity or resolution that has faded. A grain of rice blends with oaken table, and soon the table is lost amongst paper walls and austere furnishings. We do not see the wrinkles in a mother’s face, or a face at all. It is not the tangible details reach us, it is raw, heart wrenching emotion. It is there when you sit down at the bar, it is there on the bus as you ride to work, it is in our classrooms, our cities, towns and farms. It is in this very room as we speak. Moving around us are billions of sacred stories. The “why” to a dream, cherished memories and heartfelt reflections on a lives lived. Even for those born without access to quality education, to the English language, or a “refined” culture, each of our stories live on. To the very last soul, we are all desperately trying to capture the elegance and beauty of our lives, to compare notes with each other in the search for an ephemeral goal: to grasp the essence of human experience.

So often we lose sight of this. There is enough stimulation and activity in our lives that the stillness of these moments is filled with the tin of restless activity. The nightly drives turn ruminate, or our own emotions become uncomfortable and harsh. We think, oh how much we think! We believe that we know what will bring us happiness, we are resolute that our own internal compass is infallible all while lacking the self-awareness to understand it isn’t ours at all. Worst of all, we think we understand what it means to be alive, or that it is the same thing as living. We think we understand the stories of others, and that anything left to learn is not quite valuable enough to bother. Not when we have work in the morning.

For such an ailment, there is but one remedy.

Speak.

Communicate. Meet each other. Take hold of your joy and passion, or your rage and pain to tell your story. Pick up your brush or open your mouth. If we leave the stories to the famous, the elite, or the prodigous, we deprive our fellows of sustenance while simultaneously discrediting the true scope of our collective humanity. We do not need to be perfect, we do not need to be elegant, all we need do is try.

Take comfort from the fact that our subject matter, the very soul of our time on earth, is so complex and nuanced that even warped and distorted under our inevitable incompetency, it still holds power. To the voiceless and the condemned, to the shy and afraid, let us embark on this quest together.

Let us pick up our tools, as blunt as they may be, and set to work.

Original Draft: May 26, 2021

Revision: November 12, 2022