You have no time

to love me anymore

Since fame and fortune

knocked upon our door

And I spend all

my evenings all alone

Success has made a failure of our

home

– Johnny Mullins

Failure is tough to bear. Paradoxically, it is only when we can admit that we have failed that we begin to learn about ourselves, and begin to love that which is not attached to success, to making a mark on the world, to pleasing others, to playing a role, to being perfect.

When I cracked up nearly two years ago, it was impossible for me to admit that I’d failed in what I’d set out to do. I had taken on so much work, doing impossibly creative things, living on peanuts, working non-stop through the night to meet deadlines and getting high on the buzz of it, not to mention the buzz of nicotine, adrenaline and caffeine, that I was oblivious to the damage it was doing to my sanity. I took on invitations to do amazing things and never thought about the practicalities of whether there were enough hours in the week. No one knew how miserable I was inside, and I don’t think I even admitted it to myself. Failure was not an option – and because of that, it haunted me and ran me to the ground like a pack of hyenas exhausting a gazelle, ripping me to pieces. My healing began when I first uttered the words: “I can’t do this”. In that moment, I felt indescribable relief. I still haven’t fully changed my life to give myself room to breathe; I still get caught out at times by panic that I can’t do a hundred things before breakfast, but I’m getting there.

I know I’m not alone in this experience. In this capitalist culture, the natural ebb and flow of life, of successes and failures, highs and lows, is not tolerated. Panic greets the news that our economy may be slipping from constant expansion. Growth is everything. It’s as if we forget about the importance of winter, the season when leaves and fruits moulder away on the ground into compost, to nourish the next season’s growth.

On an individual level, we can carry this to extremes. The eventual repercussions of the AIB debacle are yet to be seen; but the lessons for the individual at the centre of the storm are particularly severe. It seems that Mr Average American, family-man and church-goer, focused his life entirely on success, and could not admit to failure on any level, and so he hid it. We may speculate on his reasons – perhaps he was burdened not only with his own success-orientated upbringing, but with the expectations placed on him by his wife and family to bring home the bacon. In corporate America, losers don’t get the chance to grow as human beings inside the system – they are mercilessly culled from the herd at the slightest hint of weakness, with security guards turning up at their desks unannounced, to escort them from the premises, ensuring they take nothing but their potted plant and their loved ones’ photographs in a cardboard box.

Nick Leeson, one who knows something about that experience of concealing failure, surprised me in his recent, unwelcome return to the spotlight. Having learned all about disgrace, failure, imprisonment, media harassment, the dubious distinction of having Ewan McGregor play him in a film, not to mention the experience of dealing with cancer, he’s now learning psychology, and is offering powerful insights into the (particularly male) mindset of the city trader. He is someone who apparently lost everything; and yet in his search for some meaning to his experience, he is proving himself to be a wise, albeit battered, soul – a grown-up commenting on the behaviour of little boys. He spoke eloquently of the compulsive instinct to hide mistakes, the guilt that that induces, and the vicious cycle of the desperate gambler’s repeated buttock-clenching attempts to recoup his losses. He spoke of fear and of not sleeping, night-sweats of worry and apprehension, and the secret craving to be found out, to be forced to come clean, to experience the relief of exposure, of finally admitting failure into one’s psyche. In his case, his inner torment lasted three years, due to the lack of attention in Baring’s – at least in AIB’s case it was only one year.

But Nick Leeson’s wisdom is not going to get through to any company’s board of directors, devoted only to the shareholder’s demands for constant profit. The obvious healing that is going on in his psyche, and his disgust that the same thing has been allowed to happen again to another poor success-driven sucker, count for nothing in policy terms. As the wonderful film Jerry Maguire shows, individuals may grow and succeed, but the main players, the corporate behemoths that run the world in this century, will not listen – it’s contrary to the ideological structure that supports them. I can’t see a way out of that one at the moment.

A final personal appeal to young Will from Pop Idol: when you eventually see through the hollowness of fame, I’ll be there for you, ready to catch you should you fall.