Permission to fail

"The lesson of sobriety is that I had to become a beginner. I had to be new and young and unskilled at something. I had cut out so much joy and was making my life smaller and smaller, and when I started to give myself permission to fail and screw up and not that threaten my identity, to give myself permission to be bad at something, it brought so much joy into my life. Everything we're doing takes time. We live in this instant gratification society. I think we get panicked and confused when something takes effort. But are we afraid that people will stop loving us and caring about us if we're not perfect? What if we said,live your life - you don't have to earn the world's love?"

I can't remember where I got this quote; I just remember that I wrote it down quickly because it resonated with me as a parent wanting his children to do well. It has to do with the expectations that we put on our children, the rigid timelines and high (but not necessarily lofty) standards set by our society's "heroes and demigods, because in a sense, the cultural understanding is that their success is a reflection of us, the parents. It shouldn't be this way.