Fool's wisdom

It’s okay to fail they said.  Failure is the key to success.  ‘It’s the key to success!’ they screamed.  Your ears are still ringing.  That’s what they told you then, because they didn’t understand.  You hadn’t moved anywhere in months.  Do they know what it’s like?  You didn’t even have an idea where to go.  Not only did you fail, but the mistakes you kept repeating were moronic.  They weren’t ‘smart’ mistakes.  You didn’t learn from them the first time – or the second or the third, or the fourth, or the fifth. And this wasn’t a grand struggle in the face of ultimate mysteries, or something.  The things that caught you up were trivial things, which nobody else even struggles with.

Now that you know how you could have gotten out of the rut the whole time, it’s even worse.  You had all the skills to get there from day one if you’d only been thinking straight.  In the end, you solved the problem over the duration of a coffee.  Now you’re in flow again.  It’s insane to you that you could have gotten so stuck for so long that way.  Look at how efficient you are when you’re flowing.  It washes that stuck feeling away like a bad aftertaste.  In the end, that stuckness was only temporary, and it was just a step to get here, wasn’t it?  Think of the perspective you've now gained, all that wisdom.  Failure is the key to success, you realize.  You tell all of them.  

Why are they covering their ears?