Skip to main content

​Fresh Look at Failure

​I have been working my way through the fairly recent book, Thank You for Being Late, by Thomas Friedman.  The subtitle of the book is revealing: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Acceleration.  Friedman is the well-known New York Times correspondent and author.  His earlier book (2005), The World is Flat, was wildly successful.  He is a good writer, bases his thoughts on a ton of research and addresses the big issues of our world.  His current book addresses issues like climate change, technological change and all the challenges of life in our crazy world.

​Friedman writes in a clear, focused way.  He makes so many good points that I want to copy and use in my own presentations and writings.  The other thing he also does is introduce a huge number of other writers, thinkers and researchers into the mix.  Everything he offers is science based or research based.  He does not shoot from the hip.  Even when he offers his own solutions to thorny issues, the solutions are grounded in solid evidence.  So to read him feels like wandering into a library of resources I would otherwise never know

​The final notation I would make about reading Friedman is the wonderful array of quotations that come from the myriad of authors he quotes.  Some are amazingly profound.  Others make me giggle.  And some are so articulate---even witty---I have to lean back in my chair to reflect on it.  Sometimes I know the person he quotes; more often than not, I don’t know the person.
​An example of this is a one-liner from Edward Land.  When I saw this name, I guessed it might be the guy involved in the camera world.  Looking him up, I found he was the co-founder of the Polaroid company.  He died in 1991.  It was fun to learn a few things about him, but I also realized I would never have read anything he wrote.  But somewhere Friedman came up with a great one-liner.  I want to focus on that.
​Edward Land once said, “A failure is a circumstance not yet fully turned to your advantage.” (305)  I love this take on failure.  It is a fresh look at failure.  It builds hope into the perspective.  It makes failure a part of a process, rather than a verdict.  To embrace this idea is to alter the typical mindset on failure.  It asks for a reorientation.  Let’s unpack and detail this sentence. 
​To understand failure the way Land articulates it is to put a comma after the failed experience.  You use a comma instead of a period.  It does not deny the fact of failure; it simply says the fact is not the end.  You put a comma there and pursue the process.  And maybe that is the deeper revelation of failure.  It is part of a process, not the end.  To be sure, failure is an event.  Something does not go right.  There is a bad outcome.  There are many ways to talk about failure.  And these many ways can set us up to be depressed and defeated.
​And so it is that so many of us come to fear failing.  I think this was built into me at a very early age---certainly by the time I was in school.  I know I was a perfectionist in my growing up years.  And there certainly is no role for failing in this mindset!  Of course, it is illusory; no one is perfect.  
​With this kind of perspective, risk becomes a threat.  To live like this means having courage is not easy.  We settle for doing little or even nothing.  We risk in tiny ways.  Life can become fear-based.  And of course, this is all very limiting.  You limit your opportunities and your life.  This is true in the spiritual realm, as well as all the other realms of your life.  And so we feed a self-defeating cycle.  
​I welcome seeing failure as part of a process.  It is a fresh way to think about life and where we can go.  I like to think about failure as temporary, which is exactly what the Land quotation invites us to do.  As he said, failure simply is a circumstance that is not working to our advantage.  That is indeed optimistic.  And so hopeful.
​If we think about it in spiritual terms, I would point to sin as an aspect of failure.  In some ways, we could say the ministry of Jesus was simply an antidote to this perspective of failure.  Sinners we all are, but that is not our destiny---it is not the end or the verdict.  Theologically, the answer to the problem of sin is grace.  Grace is the transformation of failure.  
​Mercy is the ministry of changing the circumstances of life to my advantage.  Mercy is the gift of the fresh look.  Jesus made it a habit to hang out with failures.  He brought an advantage to transformed any negativity characterizing them.  This spiritual gift is still available.  This transformation is still being worked out in lives like mine and yours.  It is a fresh look at failure.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I-Thou Relationships

Those of us who have read theology or, perhaps, those who are people of faith and are old enough might well recognize this title as a reminder of the late Jewish philosopher and theologian, Martin Buber.   I remember reading Buber’s book, I and Thou , when I was in college in the 1960s.   It was already a famous book by then.   I am not sure I fully understood it, but that would not be the last time I read it.   It has been a while since I looked at the book.             Buber came up in a conversation with a friend who asked if I had seen the recent article by David Brooks?   I had not seen it, but when I was told about it, I knew I would quickly locate and read that piece.   I very much like what Brooks decides to write about and what he contributes to societal conversation.   I wish more people read him and took him seriously.           ...
13 comments
Read more

Spiritual Commitment

I was reading along in a very nice little book and hit these lines about commitment.   The author, Mitch Albom, uses the voice of one of the main characters of his nonfiction book about faith to reflect on commitment.   The voice belongs to Albom’s old rabbi of the Jewish synagogue where he went until his college days.   The old rabbi, Albert Lewis, says “the word ‘commitment’ has lost its meaning.”    The rabbi continues in a way that surely would have many people saying, “Amen!”   About commitment he says, “I’m old enough when it used to be a positive.   A committed person was someone to be admired.   He was loyal and steady.   Now a commitment is something you avoid.   You don’t want to tie yourself down.”   I also think I am old enough to know that commitment was usually a positive word.   I can think of a range of situations in which commitment would have been seen to be positive.   For example, growing up was f...
20 comments
Read more

Inward Journey and Outward Pilgrimage

There are so many different ways to think about the spiritual life.   And of course, in our country there are so many different variations of religious experiences.   There are liberals and conservatives.   There are fundamentalists and Pentecostals.   Besides the dizzying variety of Christian traditions, there are many different non-Christian traditions.   There are the major traditions, such as Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and so on.   There are the slightly more obscure traditions, such as Sikhism, Jainism, etc.   And then there are more fringe groups and, even, pseudo-religions.   There are defining doctrines and religious practices.   Some of these are specific to a particular tradition or a few traditions, such as the koan , which is used in Zen Buddhism for example.   Other defining doctrines or practices are common across the religious board.   Something like meditation would be a good example.   Christians meditate;...
10 comments
Read more