This reminds me of Sand Mandala

Once complete, the sand mandala's ritualistic dismantling is accompanied by ceremonies and viewing to symbolize Buddhist doctrinal belief in the transitory nature of material life.

Some things I think we want to aim at for our entire lives, and those things are good in and of themselves even if we don't achieve them.

I think getting good nutrition, staying in a healthy state/sustaining or increasing our health span so we aren't sick, exercising so we can still get out of bed every day, seeking novelty and variety in the things we do, exploring new places, learning about the world around us and ourselves, sharing all of these things meaningfully with others on a similar journey, and even defending things that mean a lot to us are some examples of this.

The idea that these experiences must last eternally was something Nietzsche talked about this in his works. He rejected Plato's notion of the Forms as well as many religions' concepts of a life after death - this "other world". To Nietzsche, the good life in this world is defined by how far life can stray from its best moments, and that working through hardships and recognizing that they aren't permanent gives us the power of freedom.

Good times must be accompanied by bad or even mediocre times. Good times lasting forever are no different than bad or mediocre times lasting forever. So yeah, writing that book or making that friendship/relationship can be a good thing. And if those things aren't perfect, we have more reason than enough to make them better. Whether that's work shopping the book until it gets better or starting over with fresh new ideas. Whether that's meeting new people and developing those friendships over time, or leaving them for new friendships when other people don't want to reciprocate. I like to think of so many people wishing for good times to last forever are lazy and just don't want to put in the effort to change, which in my view is the whole point.

You can blame George Lucas and Star Wars for this.

Do or do not there is no try.

Yoda

While this is true, it stands in contrast to the similar message co-opted to justify or cope with planned obsolescence in gaming. Chess and Odysseus can be good for centuries, so can some mechanical or story based video games.

We also don't need to see failure as a wholly bad thing. If your hypothetical business closes down because you couldn't afford to keep it open, it DID fail, but if it ended up making your mental health better to not have all that stress, then it lead to a good thing.

Maybe I'm too realist and literal.

This is actually rather poignant.

By this standard, "successful" companies simply haven't failed yet.

It's standard that in human experience, we will fail at things. It happens, it happens often, and it will continue to happen. Failing at something is the first step. Without failure, how would we ever know how to "succeed"?

This doesn't, and shouldn't, imply that we are bad at a thing, or that we can't become good at it, or that we should give up and stop trying. It also doesn't and shouldn't imply that we should continue to try. "Failure" is just an outcome, whether that is good or bad is entirely up to the viewer to decide.

I would argue that failure is simply a mental/social concept. Things simply happen. "Success" or "failure" is entirely dependent on those who had some interest in what specifically happened. Even if you're trying to achieve a specific outcome, whether you do or not is entirely inconsequential. You tried to achieve an outcome by doing x, y, or z, and then a, b, and c occurred. Whether a, b, and c are the outcome that was desired or not is not a consequence that the universe cares about.

So much of this is simply social constructs.

we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.

I really don't agree with the premise, and would encourage others to reject that worldview if it starts creeping into how they think about things.

In the sports world, everything is always changing, and careers are very short. But what people do will be recorded forever, so those snapshots in time are part of one's legacy after they're done with their careers. We can look back fondly at certain athletes or coaches or specific games or plays, even if (or especially if) that was just a particular moment in time that the sport has since moved on from. Longevity is regarded as valuable, and maybe relevant to greatness in the sport, but it is by no means necessary or even expected. Michael Jordan isn't a failed basketball player just because he wasn't able to stay in the league, or even that his last few years in the league weren't as legendary as his prime years. Barry Sanders isn't a failed American football player just because he retired young, either.

Same with entertainment. Nobody really treats past stars as "failed" artists.

If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you're a “failed” writer.

That is a foreign concept to me, and I question the extent to which this happens. I don't know anyone who treats these authors (or actors or directors or musicians) as failures, just because they've moved onto something else. Take, for example, young actors who just don't continue in the career. Jack Gleeson, famous for playing Joffrey in the Game of Thrones series, is an actor who took a hiatus, might not come back to full time acting. And that's fine, and it doesn't take away from his amazing performance in that role.

The circumstances of how things end matter. Sometimes the ending actually does indicate failure. But ending, in itself, doesn't change the value of that thing's run when it was going on.

| just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good.

Exactly. I would think that most people agree, and question the extent to which people feel that the culture values permanence. If anything, I'd argue that modern culture values the opposite, that we tend to want new things always changing, with new fresh faces and trends taking over for the old guard.

I'm a successful painter. I just only paint once every few years.

Basically yeah, scrolling culture is all about what you've done today.

Idk, being sad about and grappling with the impermanent nature of things is kinda a fundamental part of being human.