I heard someone on TV say that when their child came home with a test where they had scored 96 out of 100, her comment to the kid was “Where did the other 4 points go?” I have to say while that appalled me, it also sounded so familiar. I grew up with a father who expected perfection and made fun of me when I missed the mark.
I also heard another person on TV talk about their success. It was Sara Blakely, the inventor of Spanks and the youngest female billionaire in the country. She talked about failing and how when she was young her father would ask her at the dinner table about her day. Part of his questioning often included “What did you fail at today?”
She continued on by saying that failure is a part of life and usually a very important part of success. Most successful people fail as much if not more than they succeed. The point of her dad’s question was to let her know that it was OK to fail, it was actually desirable, and it certainly wasn’t anything to be ashamed or distraught about. She said it made her more willing to try new things.
Failure is like most things, it depends on what you do with it. If you think of yourself as a failure when you fail that isn’t good. (As my husband pointed out today, failing and being a failure are two different things. You can’t just let a failure define you. It is what you did that failed, it is not who you are!)
What you have to do to make failures work to your advantage is to acknowledge them and learn from them. If you don’t learn the lesson that failure holds, then you have missed the point! Your daily questions should be- What did I fail at today? What did I learn from that failure? And when will I try again?
I also think that we mess up when we hold everyone to the same standard. By that I mean, we profess that everyone is different and yet we want all of our kids to go to college and if they don’t, many parents I know consider that a failure. But if we are indeed all different why would we all go to college? What if our gift and purpose is to cook? What if someone’s gift is with their hands and they love to build, create, repair, assemble? And if they are perfectly happy driving the garbage truck and are the best driver they can be, why are they not more of a success than the bank manager who hates getting up and going to work each day? We all find inspiration and gratification in different ways, so why do we judge anyone on what they are doing if it is good, honest work??
And what if your passion is singing, but in order to pay the bills you serve coffee by day and sing at night in the dive down the street? If you are happy, then are you a failure just because you aren’t in what is generally considered a more prestigious job?
If we are truly all different, then am I a failure if I am not very good at arranging flowers or my casserole repertoire is non-existent when all of the other Homewood women can whip up a lovely bouquet with one hand while stirring a tuna noodle casserole with the other?? (Do you even have to stir a tuna noodle casserole?)
I guess my point is – don’t let someone else define your success. And maybe we all need a broader definition of success. Maybe we all need to embrace failure as a part of success and let each person do the best they can on any given day. That is part of why live theatre can be so wonderful, scary and varied. It is also why I love it. On any day all we can do is our best, but our best is different every day. Some days we hit that high note or make that amazing entrance. Other days not so much. But each time we perform we do the very best we can on that particular day and we have to be OK with that.
I saw a story on Facebook (so I don’t know if it is true) about how pottery bowls in some far away country are repaired with gold when they get a crack. The gold filling gives the bowl a new look and repairs it to be useful again. (When I write it out, I realize it probably isn’t true- how do they get the gold melted into the crack and who has gold just laying around anyway!) However, the visual on Facebook was beautiful of a cracked bowl filled in with little wavy lines of gold. The more cracked, the more lines of gold would cover the bowl.
True or not, I think I will look at my failures as cracks in the bowl of my life. Each mess up is an opportunity to fill in the cracks left by these “failures” with lovely gold lessons that will make my life shinier, stronger, and even more useful. The gold places will work together to make a plain bowl more decorated and special. And eventually if I screw up enough, maybe I will have my entire bowl made of beautiful, valuable gold.
I don’t think I’ll go out seeking failure- my father’s expectations turned me into too much of a perfectionist for that! But I don’t think I’ll be so scared of failing from now on. After all, if I want to spend the rest of my life being adventurous and living to the fullest, I am bound to fail a lot! Maybe when my time on earth is up, I can present myself to God as a solid gold bowl and He will be happy I at least tried and tried again.
