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.” 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 transform 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.
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.” 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 transform 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.
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