The Fine Art of Failure
/“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
~ Samuel Beckett
Last week, when I began writing this blog, or what I prefer to call my monthly “Muse Letter”, I was contemplating the choreography of Failure. I was musing upon my own personal, “on again, off again” relationship with failures of all ilks in the dance of life. And I recalled one of my favorite quotes, from the Buddhist nun and teacher, Pema Chodron, who says: “Pain is not a punishment. Pleasure is not a reward”.
Then I tripped over a related quote, from Harvard professor Sarah Lewis, who riffs on Pema’s words of inspiration, when she writes, “Pain is not a punishment. And pleasure is not a reward. You could argue that Failure is not punishment and Success is not reward. They're just failure and success. You can choose how you respond.”
There it was. A premise and a promise that we have a choice, that I can choose how I perceive and respond to my failures. And that response will determine whether my failure builds resilience within me, or leaves me feeling paralyzed.
Naturally, I set about writing a poem, dedicated to this inquiry, curious about this alchemical medicine, and the exciting opportunity to metabolize and transform my past failures into present day success and sovereignty. How thrilling to choose an orientation of self-compassion along with a heaping dose of humor.
So imagine my delight, when I then discovered a marvelous synchronicity. October 13th is the relatively new and little known holiday called, “International Day for Failure”. Since its inception in Finland, in 2010, the Finns, and anyone else who dares and cares to participate, have set aside this autumn day to celebrate risk taking, and mistake making, in order to overcome one’s fear of failure, and the paralysis it can often evoke in us.
Below are a few excerpts from the Finnish press releases about their provocative International Day For Failure:
“October 13 is the International Day For Failure, a day when people will be encouraged to throw away the shame associated with failing, whether the failure is personal or professional”.
“It is widely reported that, ‘Far from being embarrassed by efforts that did not work out, a growing number of people are embracing, and even celebrating their failures’. It can actually build resilience in us. Grow us stronger...and happier”.
“James Mabbott, head of KPMG’s innovative series, said the language used to discuss failure has become more positive in recent years, and he credits the work cultures dominated by start-ups for this. He said this change in attitude reflected the fact that failure can be good and points to how children use it beneficially. ‘If you don’t take a risk, then you can’t learn and grow as a person. If you look at how children learn and grow, they try things all the time, and get it wrong, and then they try again. They have a great resilience.’”
As a recovering perfectionist myself, I know about the pitfalls that failure- avoidance can elicit. For me personally, fear of failure and its kissing cousin, self-judgement, first emerged in late childhood and loomed ever larger as I grew into my adult life. It has often prevented me from participating in courageous creative acts of self-expression, and stymied my forward movement. However, when I was a small child in summer camp, I was unabashedly thrilled to participate in the many plays and performances organized by our theatrical counselors. Back then, I was an utterly un-self-conscious Gretel in Hansel and Gretel, a feisty munchkin in the Wizard of Oz, and the lead Chocolate character in the Candyland play. How and when and why did I become imbued with profound “stagefright” later in life? A self-limiting hesitancy to take risks and to fail...
But perhaps the relevant question is not how or why did that happen, but instead to ask what is the medicine I need now, to heal this inflammatory condition? One playful remedy I’ve recently been introduced to, has been to participate in local Improv classes in my town. There my beloved Improv teachers, Dixie and Clifford, implore us to resist the temptation and habit of saying, “I’m sorry”, or worse yet, “I’m so stupid” whenever we lose the thread of a scene on stage. Instead, they coax us to enthusiastically say, “I’m so sexy!” and then to immediately begin the scene anew. Now how cool is that!?!
Needless to say, I appreciate that in a country like Finland, where its citizens pride themselves on conformity and behaving “appropriately”, they have playfully conjured a day dedicated to invoking its opposite. Exploring, playing, and experimenting with the healing power of failing. As far as I know, I do not have any Finnish blood in me, but I am gleefully adopting this International Day for Failure as my new favorite holiday. Its sense of irony, humor, and play points the way to recovering a healthy sense of risk taking, and a willingness to accept failure as a passport to success.
To quote once again from Pema Chodron, on the topic of failure, she says, “What do we do when life doesn't go the way we hoped? We say 'I'm a failure. But what if failing wasn't just "okay" but the most direct way to becoming a more complete, loving, and fulfilled human being? If there is one skill that is not stressed enough”, she elaborates, “it is the fine art of failing. Because if we define success as, ‘It works out the way I want it to’, we don’t get a lot of preparation or support for when it doesn’t...”
Here at Creative Resonance ~ Painting, Poetry & Play for the Soul we playfully engage in this healing alchemy of paradox. We focus on the process not the product, we celebrate our mistakes, and we allow our intuition to guide us. I welcome you to this montage of offerings, where we practice self-compassion and cultivate resilience in our everyday life.
And now I will share with you a new poem below, chronicling some of my own failures that have, astonishingly, built more resilience within me:
The Fine Art of Failing
In the fine art of failing, that disquieting segue into the discomfort of disappointment,
of not getting what I thought I wanted, and perhaps getting what I did not,
in this unbidden foray, I have had a lot of experience, I know something about this.
I am well acquainted with failure, and the familiar flood of shame and dread that seeps into my cells,
at those times, when I’ve made mistakes, and taken unfortunate forks in the road,
passed by the more promising paths, other roads not taken, now dusty with rude awakenings,
and I’ve felt the queasy sweat of regret, that uneasy clenched belly of remorse and defeat.
I know a goodly bit about this, I have a long history of failures, missteps, and mistakes,
in the classroom of life, one might say I have a phD, and an extensive list of honorary degrees,
in the course of failing, failing bigger, and failing better, and I now ask myself,
if perhaps our cultural norms have it backwards, upside down, inside out,
what if we were to perceive failing as a portal, or a threshold, a playful invitation,
what if this tumble is a healing inversion, a capacious, perspicacious shift in perception,
then a mistake would be a mistake only if we didn’t learn from it,
and if we do learn, then it becomes a revelation, a celebration, a graduation.
In elementary school I failed to finish first grade, and by that I mean, I accelerated into second,
I moved upstairs because the higher ups, my teachers and principal, said I could, that I should,
that my reading aptitude and my well behaved timid attitude, aligned with their vision of me,
just when the golden autumn leaves were falling, and Halloween costumes prepared,
they sent me up to the second floor of PS 194, and then my insomnia began, I was scared,
at night alone in my twin size bed, dread of the geometry workbook spun inside my head,
my throat went dry, I was afraid I’d fail, that I would not keep up with the rest of my class,
and I longed to fit in, I wanted to belong, so I did not protest, I acquiesced, did my best, adapted,
because I thought I had no choice, no voice in this decision, and in the end, I did make friends,
through music, math, even girl scouts, and was able to find my place in class and pass.
At age seven, I dreamed of playing piano, when I first saw Anita’s baby grand in her living room.
Anita was my mother’s best friend since childhood, and when we visited, I sat close to her,
and she taught me how to play the right hand part of “Heart and Soul”, and later on, the left,
and each time we returned, I spent hours on that piece, immersed in the joy of tickling those keys.
One day I told Grandma about this wish of mine, to have my own piano and play, she listened well,
because the next day, a knock on the door of our apartment announced piano movers from Macy’s,
the department store where Grandma worked, and they were bringing an upright just for me,
but my mother sent them away, declaring the gift way too extravagant for me, my eyes were stinging,
too stunned to speak, I watched those burly men retreat down the hallway, and for a long time,
I believed I’d failed myself, until years later, at age thirty, I bought myself that upright and played.
I went on to fail quite spectacularly in high school and college.The list is long and this poem too brief,
to accurately repeat, all my many moments of failure. One episode had to do with my abiding
affection for French, the culture and language, while hiding my aversion to math back then.
I crafted a plan where I would swap Francais for calculus, and blithely enrolled simultaneously in
both Spanish and French, drafting this unintentional hybrid, by grafting the two together in an odd
iteration of “Franish or perhaps Spench”, then years later, in college summer school, regretting that
fanciful decision, when an eight week immersion class in Physics revealed my pathetic deficit in
mathematics, with the unfortunate sequela of me almost failing that class, begging for a passing C,
from an unsympathetic professor, while downing doxycycline, to treat a raging cystitis infection,
the sorry result of drowning my cells in coffee, while cramming for the final exam. Failed planning...
Did I mention that I was a failed anorexic? I had always been a thin child and a late bloomer, but
despite my lean shape, when my two best friends began on the dieting trail, I joined them, and even
took it to the next level. I tried my best not to eat, or to eat very little. I weighed myself and my food, I
counted calories, and I took up jogging. But try as I might, I could never get it right, never not eat.
And the more I tried not to eat, the more I binged. This left me a bit unhinged, a classic example,
where the more I tried to avoid something, the more alluring it became, and the more shame I felt in
its grasp, so I went onto fasting, I pretended it was for cleansing and healing, but I also failed fasting,
unable to quiet my hunger, because every fast just led to a resurgence of a ravenous desire,
because what I was actually hungering for was me. My true self. I was hungry for my essential self,
and that failure led me on a healing journey of self inquiry, true nourishment, and self-compassion.
I went on to fail at doing headstand in yoga class. I once had a yoga teacher who was persistent,
insisting that I do a headstand in the middle of the studio, without a wall nearby to protect me if I fell.
This was something I was initially terrified to do, and the more he insisted, the more I resisted him,
until one Friday morning, he commanded me to come to the middle of the room, and do headstand
right then, right there. My fear loomed up inside of me, my heart pounded, my palms sticky, my lips
dry, but mercifully and remarkably, I felt a warm wash of love and support from my classmates. I did
not feel humiliated, I felt held by them. And I heard myself say to the teacher, “No”. I refused to obey.
I knew my limitations and I’d reached my limit. And across town, there was a different teacher, who
taught me how to fall, he said the key to inversions is knowing how to fall. And it’s fine to use the wall
as a safety net. Support is key to failing and falling. These days I can merrily plant my feet in the sky.
Certainly the biggest failure in my life, was the divorce from my husband of twenty five years, he is
the father of my three children, and despite our sincerest efforts at CPR and open- hearted surgery,
the marriage died, and some years passed, before there was a rekindling of our friendship,
a restoration of connection, a kinship, a bond of family more resilient than our past grievances.
Divorce was emotionally devastating and financially decimating, a failure of epic proportions,
to grieve that loss was big medicine, the advanced course, the real deal, requiring me
to keep my heart open in hell, to sit in that fire of cremation, purification, for as long as necessary,
because nothing less would do, then to fully embrace that failure, and find my way through...
The wisdom gained from that failed union is knowing wholeheartedly, that from our communion,
there came three beautiful sons, magnificent young men, wholehearted beings in our savory world.
I wish I could tell you that I have seen the last of my many failures, but it is not the case,
I fail all the time, some are little 2 pound, hand held failures, others are the heftier fifty pound variety,
I have gone on to fail in other meaningful relationships, each one a profound grief all its own,
and I notice that with each one, I am more compassionate, gentle, and loving with myself and others,
I have more compassion for my own broken heart, and for others, and a resilient passion for life,
the inner judge speaks less harshly, the inner critic is mostly absent, and in the presence of love,
self-compassion, and a sense of humor, I grow myself more brave. And I appreciate what the poet
Rilke wrote, when he said, “the purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things”.
As the saying goes, the road to hell (aka failure) is paved with good intentions, and although
one does not intend to fail, we will fail, we must fail, if we are to attend true fulfillment.
Failing is a rite of passage, not heralded like the glossier, glitzier, sexier race for success,
but it is the dirty little secret of heroes and giants, the precious sword in the stone,
the holy grail of freedom, the magic pass to deep resilience, to wisdom, to coming home,
and like all good paradoxes, it requires a sense of humor, and contains secret teachings,
reminiscent of the Tao Te Ching, where less is more, where failure begets success,
and to fail, to fail again, to fail better, is the sure way to liberation and self-acceptance.
