The personal achievement may lead us to success, but it
cannot lead us to the feeling that we found ourselves or that we arrive at
home.
The success opens our space to a public recognition and thus
let other people to share in our person, even if they do it praising us.
Instead, the failure belongs to us in the deepest sense. The
emotional wounds are like physical ones. They open holes in ourselves and so
they get us down to ourselves. To find ourselves should mean exactly this sort
of coming down, since we lose us by spreading out in the outer and public
space.
Nonetheless, not any failure qualifies for being able to
drive us to ourselves. It can do this only the failure which happens after a
great effort to reach the achievement for us, not for the appreciation that would
come from other people. If we strive for being successful in others’ eyes, our
failure becomes only a show we perform for them.
