There are times, so common, when a promise is broken not for the first time but repeatedly, when the heart fails again. And though we have done it before, though we know it leaves us battered, we fall. It is the flaw which so many of us bear with us: a chronic failure which accumulates in the darkness, waiting to leave us stumbling once more.
It’s a sobering consideration that no matter how far along we’ve come or how much we understand, there is still that one thing—desire, addiction, or blind spot—that brings us back down to our previous defeat. For some, it is pride that can’t be overcome. For others, it is attention, validation, or belonging. These aren’t always great, but they can result in tragedy or scandal. They’re much more likely to be tiny, aggravating, and cunning. They’re hiding behind our strengths, just waiting to be able to topple us at the appropriate moment. And the worst thing? We can normally spot them coming, but we are powerless to prevent them.
It has nothing to do with smarts or drive. Even the brightest are susceptible. The brain knows better, but the heart, the old heart, is still bent on its own undoing. This is the sour irony of humanness: our old selves are not really gone; they lurk behind better suits and kinder words. And when the hour is opportune, they leap back into power. It doesn’t take much—just a familiar scent, a voice, a crack in the armor—and the slide begins.
The reason these chronic weaknesses continue to be such is that they are not merely attached to the mind, but to the heart, to memory. You don’t fight a vice; you fight the warmth it gave you once, the promise it made you once, the illusion it sold you once.
That’s why the mind is not necessarily a match for them. You can tally up the wreckage, quote back the collapse, and still be walking into the same inferno. There is sadness in that loss. Not because we lost, but because we can see ourselves in the loss.
Worse is the shame that comes after. We wonder if we ever actually changed, if we are forever stuck the same way, even when we don’t seem to be. Some give up. They justify the weakness, legitimize it, and make jokes about it. Others become excessively self-critical, believing that perfection is the only evidence that change is occurring. Both reactions miss the reality—that we are not measuring development on if we never fall, but on how we rise, once more and again, regardless of how many times we have fallen.
You’d think, having finally reached adulthood, that we would’ve ended all these personal wars by now. But time doesn’t always go hand in hand with wisdom; consciousness does. And it takes harsh honesty to confess the very essence of one’s continued failing. The first act of courage is to name it. The second is to identify its patterns, its triggers, and its lies that honey-talk us into coming apart. Primarily, it’s remembering what the previous fall cost—and what we vowed to ourselves then.
I do not think people become mired because they enjoy it. I think they just become tired. Tired of trying to mend what only breaks. But maybe that is exactly what makes the fight heroic—because it is not easy, because it is tiring. After all, it is old. And yet, against all odds, some do battle. In silence. With no cheer. In the silence of their minds. At the edges of their desires. Those small victories count.
Perhaps the solution is not to proclaim we have no weaknesses, but to become able to work with them like a cranky neighbor—one we dislike but can somehow have to live with. Establish boundaries. Seek help when needed. And when the trap swings out once more, at least this time we know where not to tread. Or if we fall, we fall with eyes open wide—and recover faster than previously.
