The ink hadn’t settled yet on last week’s column when the universe decided it was time to test if I could stand by my public commitment to embrace failure. I got assigned a date for the two-language test at the A2 level which I’d decided to apply for some months ago assuming it would motivate me to learn Italian. I now need to cram the vocabulary and the verbs, and I keep telling myself that there is no penalty for failing. The test is designed to see if I have certain faculties in German and Italian, and if I don’t pass, it only means I need to continue practising and using these languages. But it’s not so easy, because I’ve internalised that failure is a measure of my self-worth, or I’ve been conditioned to want to excel, perhaps out of fear of the consequences of not passing.

Despite our very concerted efforts, we can be so harsh on ourselves without even knowing it, blaming ourselves if things don’t pan out the way we expected them to without making any allowances for systemic failures that are almost customised to make an individual feel small in front of state machineries. We often don’t see how our patterns of behaviour are driven by capitalist notions of time, productivity and efficiency, or even how these concepts get further complicated in the face of patriarchal governance that enables corruption, deceit and other forms of bureaucratic violence.