I heard someone say recently that they were broken? When I sought to learn more about what they meant, no words came as explanation. It was a description of how they felt. But the conversation presented some interesting insights into the nature of feeling 'broken', encountering failure, and being defeated by life circumstances.
It's fascinating how just a few words within a conversation can cause us to reflect upon the nature of a greater meaning. Certainly for me, the topic of failure, and that of the more potent aspect - defeat, is one I can associate with deeply.
We will all have our times of failure, whether that’s in business, our career, our relationships, or the vast array of creations and experiences we choose to become involved in. Failing is seemingly the process of something going ‘wrong’ and producing a non-desired outcome. Or it may be a perceived lack of success, however you might gauge that. Or indeed a loss rather than gain. We learn valuable lessons from failure and we adapt, grow and overcome, and then move on to our next experience.
Repeated failure has noticeable impact on a person’s life.
Perhaps a different view would be had by those who experience repeated failure, for whatever reasons this may occur. It may be true to say that repeated failure has noticeable impact on a person’s physical life. For failure is a physical endurance - it presents as an actuality in your physical life. Its impact may be mental and emotional, but it commences with a physical occurrence.
Defeat however, is a somewhat different, more ominous aspect which impacts in a different manner and can have lasting effects. For I believe defeat comes of the breaking of the spirit. It occurs when hope is temporarily gone, when dreams are shattered, when beliefs are broken and when faith is lost.
Defeat may break a person from the inside out. Whilst failure breaks a person from the outside in.
Whilst we may view them as two similar or same aspects of a life occurrence, actually they may be very different. The nature of failure does not impact in the same way as defeat. For when failure strikes, we reach into those inner reserves of hope and faith, restore our focus and continue onwards. Scarred a little, maybe battered, but we continue.
When defeat strikes however, there are no such inner reserves to tap into, for it is the inner spirit that is defeated and therefore it cannot find its hope or its faith or its belief in a brighter day. It is lost... it is defeated.
I would consider that times of defeat are the most critical for our need to connect to one another. It is others who bring us back from the emptiness, the darkness, the depths of defeat. Our connection to those who will soothe us, hold us, re-strengthen our own inner spirit. Those who return faith to our inner being and bring us that ray of hope. We become saved. We become rescued. By another human being.
It is our compassion for each other that heals defeat.
Consider this when you think about those you know who may be ‘broken’ in defeat. Those in depression, addiction, bereavement, loss, serious illness, and so on. All or any, may just be waiting for a moment of connection with another human being that may restore their faith and offer a ray of hope. Consider your position when you are witnessing failure or defeat upon another. What can you bring to this situation? How can you help to restore, to contribute to making whole?
I would venture to say, don’t mistake the one for the other. Failure needs practical help. Defeat needs spiritual help. But offering help and connection in such times of need is essential to our own wholeness and to the restoration of another. To share our compassion with someone who needs it makes sense and it brings a holiness into the world from which we may all benefit.
