SPIRITUAL SOAP: How to Find Your Failures
The most helpful thing that everyone hates
Before we were The Black Sheep, we were a newsletter named Spiritual Soap. Please enjoy this article from our history!
If there’s anything I know, it’s not myself.
Self-observation will teach you about yourself, but this isn’t the kind of ego-driven self-focus we enjoy. Self-observation feels like studying a lab rat, except you’re the test subject placed under demoralizing fluorescent lights.
Most people would rather slip into a coma than see the state of themselves. You might have gathered this from your years living amongst them, but most people don’t like themselves much.
Most of my life has been lived in that foggy, comatose state where everyone else is the problem. I’ve gotten better at looking at my mess because life finally rubbed my nose in it. You can try escapism and denial, but that’s like paying your bills with gambling wins–you’ll need a lot of luck and even if you get it, that won’t make you the kind of person that doesn’t squander their luck.
The easiest part of facing your failures is saying that you believe in facing your failures. You might say it so much you forget to face those failures, but that’s okay, they’ll remind you.
I let my failures find me once and I’ve been trying to find them first ever since. The memory of sinking into the black hole of my own ignorance while sobbing in a parked rental car still throbs within me sometimes, like old people’s bones ache before the rain.