History, of course, is filled with anecdotes of highly accomplished persons being chastened by unsuccess. We are accustomed to recounting stories of Joyce receiving dozens of rejection letters before finding a publisher for Ulysses and Einstein failing high school math. We find it inspirational to learn that Beatrix Potter had to use her own money to publish The Tale of Peter Rabbit and that Jane Eyre was dismissed by an early critic as “sheer rudeness and vulgarity.“【T1】We marvel at the perseverance of Nietzsche, whose masterpiece Beyond Good and Evil sold a mere 114 copies in its first year in print, and the perception of George Sand who had to adopt a man’s name as her pen name to see her work published in a male-dominated literary culture.

Yet we tend to interpret such setbacks not on their own terms, but in light of their author’s future acclaim.【T2】That is, we see them as setbacks and not failures, detours on the road to success and not the destruction of the road itself. These are tales told to inspire resilience, not humility; determination, not an awareness of one’s weakness.

【T3】That we insist upon turning stories of loss into stories of gain is no doubt rooted in our preference for happy endings. We need to believe that any fate can be surmounted as long as we are strong enough to surmount it. And in the face of a chaotic and often crushing existence, such notions are not negotiable. They are necessities that must be treated as true if one is going to accomplish the difficult feat of getting out of bed and facing the new day.

The only problem is that nothing could be further from the truth.【T4】As we all know, human existence is full of suffering that resists explanation and obstacles that cannot be overcome. To be human means to be continuously confronted with failure, both one’s own and the numerous failures of the world around us. What then is one to do? How ought we to cope with the struggles and shortcomings inherent in every aspect of our lives?

In his recent book, In Praise of Failure, the contemporary philosopher Costica Bradatan suggests that we stop striving for success and instead embrace life’s failures.【T5】Noting that failure “lies at the core of who we are” and that “Failing is essential to what we are as human beings,” the philosopher praises the benefits of coming to terms with our imperfections and accepting the instability of human existence. Doing so, he claims, will humble us and enable us to see ourselves honestly, stripped of the disguise that success seems to provide.

【T2】