A24: Everything, Everywhere, All At Once Pt. 3
Failing Until it Becomes Success
I think there is something to be said about failure.
Failing is such a natural, necessary thing in life but we never look at it that way. In the binary of life that is good and bad, we see failure and success on opposite sides of the coin when in reality, failure will always dot the path to success.
To have failed is to have learned and lived and moved on.
Success only comes when enough of your failures can be cobbled together to make a beautiful Frankenstein behemoth of success. And even then, how you define success will change what you do and how you do it.
I loved how Everything Everywhere All At Once (from here out to be called EEAAO because I’m really goddamn lazy) really hammered home that the Evelyn we are first introduced to, is the Evelyn of which everything goes wrong.
Any and every thing imaginable, every failure, every possibility of unhappiness is ripe for the picking in this Evelyn’s world.
It’s funny, because she doesn’t acknowledge how shitty her situation is until Alpha Waymond brings it to her attention. Another classic case of the grass being greener on the other side— but can you imagine that?
Working your ass off and doing everything in your power to make things work, and then to be told that you are unironically living as the worst possible version of yourself?
“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
—Winston Churchill
That fucking sucks so bad, I can most definitely relate.
Failure is a taboo in our society. It’s that proverbial scarlet letter that we’re terrified of marking ourselves with, but will grace our everyday lives with no remorse. But it’s not the end of the world. We act like failure will define our lives while in actuality, the most it can do is help shape it.
Success, however you define it, is born from repeated and unyielding failure. The only difference is the drive to go on until we can taste that semblance of success as dewy drops on our faces.
Which is why in my EEAAO podcast episode with Dan Ton (which I definitely recommend listening to here), we both talk about how much we love Waymond and his wise words:
Be kind.
Choose it, live it, be it.
To others absolutely because you never know what someone is going through.
But most importantly to yourself.
Be kind to yourself.
When you’re stacking the losses and they just keep swinging at you. When you can’t seem to catch a break in your professional or your personal life. When it feels like everything you touch ends in failure.
Be kind. To yourself.
We’re muddling through a pandemic. We’re experiencing a world at war with itself. We’re inundated with countless violent and never-ending moments of hatred thanks to the Internet.
So be kind to yourself and the journey you’re taking to get to where you need to go.
And even if the world was peachy-dandy and everyone had smiles for days, even if things are lined up for success and failure isn’t even on the horizon and somehow someway you make a mistake?
Know that it will be okay. You’ll be okay. Okay?
If you wanna check out my original newsletter and synopsis on EEAAO, clicky me over yonder!
If you wanna check out the second newsletter on EEAAO and my favorite themes, check this bad boy out!
Check out me and Dan Ton’s podcast on all the cool kid’s streaming services:
Loved this triad of posts on EEAAO Shay! Be kind are words to live by. Thank you :)