Doubtlessly all of us deal with failure from our early days. We don’t always use the word, failure, to describe one-year olds who try to walk. But I have recently watched my grandkids negotiate that momentous step in human growth. They look like tiny drunks lurching through the living room. They crash with frequency. It is funny that all of us bystanders keep encouraging the young one, who has barely mastered standing up, now to take those first steps. And then, they try. Inevitably they fail. And they fail often. But they keep trying and, soon enough, to begin to walk.
We don’t think about their earlier wobbly efforts as failures, but that’s what they are. This proves the first point we all should register when we think about failure. Failure is not always final. Often it is part of the process. It is part of the process of growth. It is part of the process of development. If the one-year old is not willing to risk, they won’t fail. But they would never learn to walk. And how sad that would be.
In a recent conversation, I tried to explain to someone that failure normally is followed by a comma and not a period. To write the comma in a sentence means there is more coming. The comma separates what has just been stated from what is yet to come. The same with failure. Failure is simply what has been tried---and didn’t work, but it will be followed by more. Sadly, not all folks understand failure in this fashion.
The people who don’t understand fall into two categories. Some try something, fail and assume the failure is followed by a period. That means they assume failure is final. They will not risk another shot at it. They tried, failed and that’s it. No more effort. Failure is the final verdict. In this sense failure leaves us in a sad, downer place. It is tempting to feel like a loser. And this is no fun!
The other kind of person who sees failure followed by a period is even sadder. That is the kind of person who is afraid of failure. So that kind of person never is willing to try---he or she will not even risk the possibility of failing. We talk about this kind of person as risk-averse. To return to our one-year old, the risk-averse one-year old will not even try to walk. He or she remains content merely to crawl. There is mobility, to be sure, but no advancement. Crawling is stunted growth. And so it is with the person who is risk-averse. They become stunted people.
This is a personal issue for me. I think I was one of the two kinds of people I just outlined. Basically I was risk-averse. In my twisted mind, if you don’t risk something, you will not fail. True enough. But I didn’t realize I was opting for crawling. And if I did risk something and failed, it seemed to me that was the end---period. This kind of mindset made me conservative. There are many ways where being conservative is a plus, but not in this case.
As I thought about it, my view of failure was tied up with my self-image. My self-image was constructed such that failure did not fit in the picture. My self-image was idealized. I had an image of myself, which never saw myself failing. And so if I were to fail, that simply did not fit my idealized picture of myself. In a way I had to get over myself!
What that means is I had to get over my idealized version of myself. I had to be willing to come up with a new, more authentic image of myself. In the process I was helped by the psychiatrist spirituality teacher, Gerald May, in many of his writings. May contends that our self-image is constructed by ourselves with the help of others. There are various components that make up the typical self-image. These are things like our sense of our body, an estimation of our will, etc. A part of this self-image for me was someone who did not fail.
What I needed to learn and accept was failure is usually followed by a comma. It is not final nor terminal. We can learn from failure, rather than be defeated by failure. Like the one-year old, we get back up and try again. She learns to walk and we can learn how to get past failure. To get past failure is to grow and develop. This has been my recent journey. This often requires us to give ourselves some grace. We may even need a good bit of self-care. We usually discover that other people are much more willing to give this to us than we are willing to give ourselves.
I am reminded of a line from one of Parker Palmer’s books, where he observes that generative people failure often. This idea of generative people is simply a way of talking about creative, innovative people. These are folks doing new things or old things new ways. Usually, there are no recipes for success. It is try, try, and try again. In reality this means fail, fail and risk failing again.
If I become spiritually explicit, I understand God is the One who wants us to walk---find our own two feet and get on with doing what we are called to do. Often this means being generative---figuring out our own path. I don’t think it is predestined. We may have to risk failing to find our way forward. And if we blow it in the process, God forgives and encourages us to try again. Surely, God is a God of grace.
God always helps us to get beyond failure. Maybe the divine joke is ultimately we can’t fail. If I believe that, I can relax and enjoy the process.
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