Progress Part II: Failure
Wait… What? How is that progress? Failure is almost the opposite of progress. (Not quite. Regression is the opposite of progress, but that is beside the point.)
On New Year’s Eve, I posted about having received my new glasses with progressive lenses in the mail the day before. For the youngsters who don’t understand, there is a time where you’ll find out that even though you have a near-sighted prescription, you have trouble reading through your glasses, so you have to take them off. It’s called aging. That’s why people get bifocals, trifocals, or – in my case – progressive lenses.
And yeah… There’s a learning curve… Toward the top of the frames, everything looks normal and clear. As your eye tracks down the lenses, a combination of two things happen. The first thing you notice is that everything gets stretched (aka magnified) BIG time. The first time I drove wearing those things, I felt like I was sitting WAY up high. I was thinking “Is this what it is like to be high?” Look… I know some of you partake of certain herbs, but that’s not my thing. It was still weird and my depth perception was ALL out of whack. I’d see people and they were looking waaaay tall.
I wonder if this is why Mom used to keep her glasses on the end of her nose…
The other thing is that happens is very subtle, but I noticed it just the same. Toward the middle third of the lens, it is also stretched slightly horizontally. It is like both sides of your vision are being curved inward. Of course, this is no doubt to make up (slightly) for the vertical stretching. In any case, I shouldn’t complain because I can actually read text without taking off my glasses.
Heck… I can read music notation without contorting my body. So what if my vision is now a bit more twisted?
And what does this pondering about progressive lenses have to do with FAILURE?
Going to shift gears a little bit… again… Hell, if you have read any of my previous blog entries, I do this all the time. You’ll either get used to it or scroll by.
It’s not exactly a secret… but at the same time, I haven’t exactly advertised it either; I’m in seminary. In fact, this is my third year. I’ve taken it pretty slow, at first just seeing if I even really want to be doing this. (Still having that argument, actually.) Given that I serve at a church, play music professionally, and am a fulltime caregiver, I have been taking two classes at a time. The subject matter has been great and I am learning a lot. At the same time, I would be lying if I didn’t say it has been extraordinarily challenging.
This past semester – Fall 2024 – it caught up to me. This isn’t to say that it alone caught up with me, but rather that everything I’ve been doing caught up with me. About October, I knew I was in trouble. My mind screeched to a halt. I had trouble with a major assignment that on its surface was simple. I could not do it. I would spend hours writing notes, notes, and more notes and could not assemble a cogent paragraph to save my life. I turned that assignment in two weeks late… and struggled getting other ones done in both classes. I’d spend hours and hours going around in circles, making notes and more notes, and nothing. It was like Writer’s Block, but way the hell worse.
I failed both classes. First time ever. Never had anything less than a B on a college transcript. My late father is rolling around inside the bottom of my filing cabinet. From his standpoint, anything less than an A was indicative of a serious character flaws. He used to rip at me in high school about “Stupidity B’s.” And here I am thirty years later with two Fs.
I could sit here and say “it was just the voice of my Dad”, but that’s just not so.
Throughout my life, people have – uninvited and unsolicited – offered their critical and condescending opinions on everything, whether it be my choice to major in music, quitting the public school teaching profession, going into ministry, or choosing to become a caregiver. Mind you, there are friends who are truly friends, but there are also certain people whose “friendliness” is really just barely-masked contempt. They are people who base at least some part of their identity on simply “being better” or “being in a better position” than you. It has been a lifetime of work – sometimes with the harshest of reminders – learning to recognize these people, learning to recognize the situations that put me in contact with those people, and learning to cut those people out of my life.
I only have so much mental space; I don’t have room for those who waste my time, use me, insult my intelligence, and get their jollies on “reminding me” of “my place.” Been there; done that; spent too much time there; got other shit to do.
What does this have to with Progress?
Like the progressive lenses I was just mentioning earlier, “failure” tends to skew the vision (reality) a bit with a huge dimple on an otherwise flat surface. Once it became clear there was no way I was getting out of this “slump”, the voices of past naysayers – the vast majority of whom have little idea what I am even up to – got extraordinarily loud. I was looking at thousands of wasted dollars, two and a half wasted years, the Scarlet Letter of Ignominy, and the continuing prospect of “What if this block never ends?” I had pulled out of my next semester courses and was dialing down other things I was going to do…
…and at about the twelve hour mark, the “panic/imminent doom” impulse receded. I’m reregistered for Spring term. The world moves on. My world moves on. Momma’s doing fine. The church is doing fine. The worship program is doing fine. My salsa band is about to have its first rehearsal of 2025. My finances have about 50% recovered from 2020’s Covid-19/Constructive Termination fallout. Anyone with something to say is once-more invited to go f*** themselves. I’m fine.
Four and a half years ago, I did something professionally and socially “unpopular” and spoke out about what I had been through. I got pushback and alienation at the time, but I found something a bit more as time passed: peace. The peace that comes with living in truth as opposed to a spun-“truthiness” based on corporate messaging, branding, and professional ambition. The peace that comes with surrendering the need to fit in with others or presenting myself as someone “respectable.” The peace that comes with refusing to “protect” someone by hiding their misdeeds, much less if those misdeeds were against me. The peace that comes with placing the image-idol on the altar again, again, and yet again.
Does peace come without stress? Nope. And it does have a cost. Some of the old impulses try to worm their way back. Even when “failure” pops up, I have to intentionally push back against the tendency to hide or downplay it. I have to constantly self-monitor and ask myself “All right… Am I letting this ‘thing’ or this ‘whatever’ take ownership over me?”
A certain degree of self-protection is always necessary. I will never be completely open about absolutely everything that has happened/is happening in my life. That is a privilege reserved only for Jesus. At the same time, I have to recognize in myself when that is going too far into the other direction and surrender it.
So…
- I’m in seminary. Masters of Divinity program. Estimating I have about 2.5-3 years left. I’d like to be done by my 50th birthday.
- I may have little or no future in ministry whatsoever. That’s in God’s hands.
- I failed my Fall 2024 semester. I plan on retaking both classes this coming fall.
Feel inclined to Naysay? Well… Let’s cut past all the back and forth and skip right over to the invitation I extend for you to do a certain action to yourself. I’m not asking you for permission; it’s not about you. It’s barely even about me.
Peace – actual peace – and Integrity are important values to me. Hopefully, I’ll start to resonate with a third value that begins with an “E” so I’ll have an awesome acronym. Unfortunately, most of the “E” words I have learned over the past three years have been terms such as Eschatology, Ecumenicalism, Episcopal, Epistemology, Ecclesiology, Exegesis, Eisegesis…
Sometimes the best progress you can make is deciding for yourself on how to go forward.
Peace out,
TKP
1/10/25