• @[email protected]
    25•8 months ago

    I disagree with your sentiment, and think the examples work. If your aim was to run a coffee shop forever and you quit, then yes you have failed. If, on the other hand, your aim is to enjoy and have the experience of running a coffee shop, then doing so for two years and stopping is a success. Similarly with a relationship. You can have succeeded in having a mutually fulfilling relationship that you both have happy memories from, even if you then grow apart. It succeeded in its aims of spending time enjoying being a relationship.

    • sp3ctr4l
      10•8 months ago

      The original image specifically mentions quitting running the coffeeshop because they can’t handle the stress and cannot afford supplies. That is failing at operating a business.

      And as I said about relationships, yes, you can have a good relationship that ended on good terms, but a marriage that does not end mutually and amicably (most that end, end badly) is objectively a failure. Perhaps this is old fashioned of me, but I am reasonably certain that in nearly all cases a wedding marries two people for the rest of their lives at least in aspiration, so divorce represents a failure of that mutual aspiration. It is significantly less of a failure if two married people separate on amicable terms, but it still literally is a failure of the concept of marriage.

      A friendship that does not persist is objectively not as good or successful or important as one that does, barring exceptional situations where two people wished they could remain in contact but have no actual means to do so.

      I feel as if I am repeating myself, though I do not mean to be an ass. To me this is simply what these words mean.

      So I guess, respectfully, I disagree with your disagreement haha.

      Yeah you can run a coffee shop and stop doing so without failing, but the way the person described quitting running the shop was failure.

      Likewise yes you can absolutely enjoy a temporary relationship, nearly all relationships are temporary (not until death), but a marriage that ends is literally a failed marriage, and a friendship that ends or fizzles out just is less of a friendship than one that persists for a very long time.

      • @DreweliteEnglish
        2•8 months ago

        I think what it comes down to is some people have a fundamentally different way of thinking about it. Myself included. Setting my intention on something far in the future doesn’t necessarily mean I actually intend on achieving it. In fact, I’m almost 100% sure that I won’t. Given enough time, I’ll be a completely different person. Holding myself to what the younger version of me decided is foolish.

        If I end up not being able to financially support a business I started, but I successfully provided for myself with it for years and learned a lot, it’s still valuable. If I spend 20 years in a relationship that ends, but it leads to greater self-understanding and helps me build better relationships in the future, it was worth it. It’s conceivable that a person could live an entire life doing things that you would classify as failures. But also feel completely satisfied and happy with it. So that suggests it might be a flawed perspective, no?

    • @[email protected]
      3•8 months ago

      People change, their learn new things and their wants and objectives change.

      I would be wary of considering a failure that somebody who started with the aim of running a coffee shop forever, at some point changed their minds and quit.

      It depends on how they quit - if it was good while it lasted and it was their own choice to quit because their hearth wasn’t in it anymore or even for hard-nosed business reasons, it doesn’t sound like a failure to me. For me a failure would be quiting against one’s wishes. In fact I would see the staying running a business you’re fed up with against your wishes a failure.

      As for relationships, some of the biggest failures I’ve seen involved people staying in something that had become hellish “for the sake of children”, due to money constraints or just for keeping up with appearences, whilst I would consider a successful relationship when people live well together for some years and when they do drift apart do the adult mature thing and separate by mutual agreement, often still being friends afterwards.