Alt-text:
I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.
Like… if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you’re a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.
The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.
| just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success… I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.
I think you are looking into things in a non healthy way.
You are right that success and failure are not binary. Furthermore, every system, be it physical, living, or social, fails sooner or later.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to not fail for as long as possible, for if something brings joy or safety it’s continued success is important. It follows that if something that’s important to someone fails it’s healthy to morn it and to try to learn from it to not repeat the same failure.
Agreed, the flip side is allowing something ending to be sad too. Not everything needs a positive spin.
This just reads to me like a classic step of linguistic evolution, where people can’t be bothered to caveat the normal word with a deeper meaning (eg “my business ultimately ended, but it was the right call and it was always be a great time in my life…” etc) and so think a new word is necessary, until inevitably the same thing happens, ad naseum.