firsts

Man's first step on the moon!

 
Firsts are often exhilarating, but as with everything that we try for the first time, they open us up to uncertainty, vulnerability, and the very real possibility of failure.

I myself am trying to recover from a very big failure: my biggest one yet, if I'm being honest.  I wish I could say that I just brushed myself off and started again, like so many inspirational people often do; but I have reacted in exactly the opposite way. Because it was such a colossal failure, it affected me in a completely negative way. It sucked out my will to live. I no longer saw myself as an able and capable person. I no longer saw myself as someone who could make things happen. I found myself wanting for reasons to get up in the morning (some days I literally didn't). I found it hard to look at myself in the mirror. I cut off contact with all friends who knew about my failure, convincing myself that I wouldn't be able to take their pity. I stopped living, literally. Even up to now, as I am typing this, I still feel as though I am existing on auto-pilot. It has been so long since I last felt really, really alive.

For those of you who are curious, I (not so very recently) failed the bar exams, after enduring five very painful years of law school, and 4 equally lonely months of bar review after that. Failing the bar is not a novel thing, of course. In the Philippines, where I live, an approximate of only twenty percent of those who take the exam every year pass it.  In 2010, which was the year I actually took the bar exams, only 982 out of the 4,847 examinees passed the exam (20.26% thereabouts).


The thing is, never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I would fail the bar. Up until law school, there wasn't really anything that I wasn't able to conquer (except my love life and my diet, really!). I did pretty well in high school, I graduated with honors from one of the country's top universities, and got into the most exclusive and elitist law school known to man. (My law school experience was far from easy, and when I finished I was probably at the bottom of the curve, but when I graduated I thought that I had put the worst behind me.)

Failing the bar devastated me, and I really haven't recovered from it. After I found out that I had not passed, there was no fire that motivated me to study again, to try harder. I know I disappointed and baffled many people when I told them that I did not want to take it again. I wanted to give myself more time. I wanted to acknowledge that there were so many things I had failed to learn. I wanted to feel happy about doing something again. I scrambled around in search of a vision, and decided that I would not be able to rally my spirits for another attempt at the bar just yet. The 2011 bar exam is less than a month away, and I did not register to take it. I don't know when I will take it or if I ever will take it again, actually. The thought that I consciously put one of my dreams on hold (maybe forever) terrifies me, but the only thing that keeps me going is the idea of other dreams that I am hoping to breathe life into.

Before entering law school, I dreamed of one day putting up a magazine that would inspire other people to live out their best lives. Going into law school put that dream on hold, but I am grateful that it has brought me to this point in time, when digital publishing is taking the world by storm. I see it as serendipitous that I have access to all these tools, and that it presents the opportunity of reaching everyone around the world, who feels as I do. All I really have to do is to begin. And so I am.

This blog is literally the first step I have taken to put that failure behind me. It is my version of waking up from my self-induced coma. Here, I plan to be painfully honest (because I believe that my hurts and failings can help others learn from them), but more than that, I intend to be sincerely hopeful about the future. I will write about all my efforts to confront my demons, and I will be candid about my future failures and successes. I will write about alternative paths, about trailblazing ideas, and the broken roads that we all take in getting to our goal. I think this first post is symbolic of me beginning to believe in myself again. For one, it makes me vulnerable again. As Homer Simpson famously put it, "Trying is the first step to failure.":-)

Don't believe Homer's hype!

Finally starting this project is both terrifying and invigorating. There are so many ways in which I could fail. Maybe no one will want to read a failure's musings. Maybe I won't get around to updating and writing the way I hoped. Maybe people won't see value in what I do. But I am excited at all the possibilities that this beginning could lead to.  Personally, finally writing about this helps me make sense of it all. On a bigger level, if it could help someone who is feeling as bleak as I am, then making my hurts public will have been worth it. To anyone reading this, cheers! Let's begin the journey to wholeness together. :-)