I was planning to sit down and write a ten minute review of Netflix’s Jessica Jones, but I failed to watch it. That led to a philosophical moment, which in turn led me to wax here on the idea of failure. In short, failure is a construct. We talk about failing as an act–a moment in time in which something we wished to happen did not. We speak about failure in more lasting terms. Failure is alternately defined as the “omission of expected or required action.” That definition sits at the heart of the point I’m squeezing into 10 minutes and some untold number of words. Basically, we use failure as a social reinforcement tool. We hold it over others and ourselves as a motivator–the stick that moves us through the unwanted chores and hard moments of life. In that sense, I think failure is a terrible idea to hold on to. I think there is a better way.
There’s a good chance my kids will fail tomorrow. I watched the practices and came to the conclusion that we are going to do exactly what we have done against this team the previous two times. This is bad, because I also have it on good authority that the team spent the week not practicing but watching game film of us doing the things we always do and recognizing it so they can stop it. So, my kids could fail. The beauty of that is they will move right along from that failure to the immediate question of, “Can we get a drink from Quiktrip?” This doesn’t mean that they don’t care. It means they don’t hold on to failure the way we are taught to as life accumulates on us like so much unwanted baggage. For them, failure is still a moment. They learn from the moment, consider how to better handle similar moments (because the exact moments never happen twice) and move on.
This is a natural thing that I feel like I’ve been trained out of over the years. I hold on to failures in writing, work, love, and sports and let the lessons weigh on me and warn me off on future endeavors. Failure shrinks ones ability to take risks and life is nothing if not a series of incalculable risks. So, I say we don’t hold on to failure. We simply fail, or succeed, and then we do something else.