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Failure is good. I have embraced the freedom that comes with failing & trying new things. I have become desensitised to it. 10yrs ago my biggest fear was being unsuccessful but not having the courage to live a life true to yourself & not what others expect from you is far worse.
It is easy to say a person is a failure based off on what success looks like within the time they exist. Equating geniuses with precocity, meanwhile some of the greatest inventors, artists & greatest success stories became who/what they are towards the end part of their lives.
‘The Late bloomers vs early prodigies Effect’. Comparing geniuses who discovered themselves quickly, accomplishing prominent strides early in life against late virtuosos who had to navigate different paths to arrive at their own greatness later in life. All journeys are valid.
I had so many plans for my 20’s & when I didn’t make it to Forbes 30 under 30 after being a finalist or the Queen’s Young Leaders Award after so many social projects successfully executed in the UK/Middle East, I felt like a failure. I didn’t even celebrate my 30th birthday.
But in time, I realised the journey is as important as the destination, there are people who got deterred from their unique path towards greatness by significant role players in their life simply because they didn’t look like what success should resemble or exhibit in the moment.
“On the road to great achievements, the late bloomer will resemble a failure.” The Picasso vs Cézanne metaphor. Excerpts Malcolm Gladwell’s “What the Dog Saw” paints a very compelling narrative:
“Picasso was the incandescent prodigy. His career as a serious artist began
“Picasso was the incandescent prodigy. His career as a serious artist began
with a masterpiece, he painted many of the greatest works of his career including Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, at the age of 26. Picasso fit our usual ideas about genius perfectly.
Cézanne didn’t.
Cézanne didn’t.
If you go to the Cézanne room at the Musée d’Orsay, in Paris, the finest collection of Cézannes in the world, the array of masterpieces you’ll find along the back wall were all painted at the end of his career.
A painting done by Picasso in his mid 20’s was worth, he found, an average of 4 times as much as a painting done in his 60’s. For Cézanne, the opposite was true. The paintings he created in his mid 60’s were valued 15 times as highly as the paintings he created as a young man.
The freshness, exuberance, and energy of youth did little for Cézanne. He was a late bloomer & for some reason in our accounting of genius and creativity we have forgotten to make sense of the Cézannes of the world.”
“The Cézannes of the world bloom late not as a result of some defect in character, or distraction, or lack of ambition, but because the kind of creativity that proceeds through trial and error necessarily takes a long time to come to fruition.”
“the world is just slow to appreciate their gifts. In both cases, the assumption is that the prodigy and the late bloomer are fundamentally the same, and that late blooming is simply genius under conditions of market failure.”
Excerpt From Malcolm Gladwell “What the Dog Saw.
Excerpt From Malcolm Gladwell “What the Dog Saw.
Reading this book change my perception of what being successful looks like uniquely to me. My trajectory of happiness changed. Little daily accomplishments became my everyday success story. From making simple meals, keeping my woman happy & finishing daily business to-do-list.
I don’t classify failure anymore as being less successful compared to others but as work in progress. If you are a Cézanne or a Picasso or both, your journey is valid & unique. So many geniuses lost in transition cause the context of the world they live in deems them not enough.
