(MENAFN- Khaleej Times)

The Internet was called the information super-highway. So, what happens when 'the grass isn't always greener on the other side of the fence' is taken to its logical, if hyperbolic, conclusion?

We all know, or can know, what is happening everywhere around the world all the time, so why should we care about getting jobs or making money? What's the point in trying and constantly failing, flailing, in our efforts to attain the life we were promised? Was it all a fabrication of systems of power outside our understanding, or just part of the uncertainty of life?

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It feels in many ways like our parents were the last generation to understand how to move on from failure and have hope for the future. There was a feeling, however faint, that the grass was greener somewhere else.

Gen-Z has been in the unenviable position of having to completely rethink failure and who is to blame. From another angle, these days it is easier than ever to shift your own faults and shortcomings to those of an institution, persecuted for playing by the rules of empathy and open-mindedness when everyone else was playing selfishly.

Failure is a speedbump on the road of life, and around that barrier we must shore up ties with each other and ourselves, in essence stringing together a community based on facets of ourselves harder to see due to the times we live in. At every turn not only is there some sort of grievance, disaster or violence offering escape to just bury your head in the sand, but forces working to pull you apart at the seams.

Within the context of moving on from failure, it isn't up to anyone to try and understand the psychological partition you did not consent to. What you do have to understand is your own reality, have some self-empathy for the situation you've found yourself in, so you can gather the focus to recover or find help and get yourself out of a situation.

I tie this back to school, as I often do since I haven't had that kind of structured full-time work in the 'career' workplace since my first job washing dishes. In 2025, I can see and feel how far I have come, two degrees, published as a writer, on mastheads as an editor - recognition. Success despite failure, even, and I can say with a measure of confidence that I have internalised those lessons and see failure now as simply what is not yet possible. Journalism is about identifying problems, talking about it, and getting enough people talking about it to positively build upon those problems, and doing journalism on my own life and career offered answers I thought were impossible.

It's a struggle still, because the world was not, and is not, set up for the empathetic and open-minded, but the loudest. Sometimes when I failed as an adult, I felt like a kid - I just want to take my ball and go home, because the other team isn't playing by the rules and the referee doesn't care. But it is possible to build on that feeling, because there has to be a tomorrow, whether another game or a fresh referee, or even teammates who can be there to be strong for you.

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