A Life Long Lesson

What do I learn from a life of rejections?
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​To keep my chin up. To stride along. To hurt, inside. To tend to the little pieces of my heart that disassemble with every NO. To sooth them, and then to go on. To go on and face those rejections, and learn to embrace them. Perhaps learn to love them. Mother them. Cradle them. Be indifferent about them, perhaps.
Who would I be, if I didn’t have the eye to see them? If I had only seen the openness I receive in this artistic endeavor years in the making. If I would turn a complete blind eye to the failures, the every day failures, the every hour failures, the life failures.
Fear of failure? I have no fear of failure. I experience failure. Each and every day as I face those rejections. But I also experience success. Accomplishment. A win. Yes, both can exist in the same time. I can fail and succeed in the same exact moment. What is the failure of the moment? And what is its success?
It seems to me that we fear success far more often, as we tend to not see it when it comes our way. We worry about what could go wrong. We dread the pressure success brings along. We hold on to it too tightly and forget to enjoy, to rejoice, to get relief. Success can offer relief - yet we don’t see it as such. We see it as a tightening. A tension. A prison of sorts.
So no, I am not afraid of failure. I live it. I breath it. I face it no matter how dark, obnoxious, FUCKED, painful, lonely it feels. I FEEL it. What I tend to shy away from is the true feeling of a win. An inner win. A real win. Of the heart, of the soul. No other win matters. No matter how the world and its social media obsessed influencers of the world and the venture capitalists and the over achievers and the golfers and the narcissist and the fearful tell you - remember: NO OTHER WIN MATTERS BUT THE WIN OF THE HEART. YOUR heart.