And Now It’s Up To You: You Will Fail
(Number two of three in the series for those walking to Pomp and Circumstance this spring…)
You will fail. Ouch. I know, but hear me out.
You will succeed, too. Some of you in the most extraordinary ways. But trust me on this, if you’re trying to do much of anything at all you are going to fail. And it’s not going to be any fun when you do.
The Japanese have a saying that in translation reads: “Fall down 7, get up 8.” I bought a t-shirt with that splattered across the front for my daughter when she was a toddler. It’s a pretty good idea however old you are.
I’m a big fan of getting up. It beats the daylights out of lying on the ground whining and complaining. Those two time-wasters don’t get you anywhere. They just delay the inevitable.
I hope you’ll recognize the opportunity that exists there, though—while you’re flat on your back or face down in the mud—and I hope it will make your heart race and your blood boil. And then I hope you’ll dust yourself off, take a deep breath, and get on with things. Because the falling down part is a given. The getting up part is the great separator, the decision that makes all the difference in the world.
Randy Pausch, the infamous “living while dying” Carnegie Mellon professor, wrote in his best-selling book, The Last Lecture, “Brick walls are there for a reason. They are not there to keep us out. They are there to show us how badly we want something.” I’d like to tell you that life is a pleasure cruise, that everything you touch will turn to gold, that they’re handing out lollipops at every turn. But that would be a lie. Life is unpredictable at best. And sometimes it’s very, very hard. Even when it’s good. So don’t be surprised when you run face first into the wall. Don’t let it zap your equilibrium. Remember where you are going and why you headed that way in the first place, then get back up and go again.
Widespread wisdom says failure teaches you things. It does. But so does success, so don’t get duped into thinking you have to fail to learn. Learning is available in the belly of all things if you’re paying attention. Failure does, however, come offering its own set of unique gifts. The big one being the automatic filter it provides for sifting and separating the bound and determined from the merely interested. People come out of crashes in one of two diametrically opposed buckets: the “lay and flop” and the “get back up and go.” Those in the “get back up and go” bucket rise up with muscles they didn’t have when they fell down.
Widespread wisdom says failure teaches you things. It does. But so does success, so don’t get duped into thinking you have to fail to learn. Learning is available in the belly of all things if you’re paying attention. Failure does, however, come offering its own set of unique gifts
While I’m at it, I have another small piece of disconcerting news: Regardless of what all the dentist office posters on the ceiling say, everything is not possible. When new thresholds (especially the kind that require medieval dressing) present themselves, the world gets a little wound up and starts to surf on positivity waves. We pull out our best “you can do this” fist pump assertions while trying to make you believe that horses can talk and people can fly and that any and everything you want to do or be can come to fruition if you only toss it out into the Universe enough.
While I’m all about positive thinking, I come bearing sobering truths today. And the truth is that’s not true.
It’s not that nothing is possible because so much is! It’s just that everything’s not. I won’t ever be able to sing and dance like Beyonce no matter how hard I work or how I long I look in the mirror and tell myself I can. I’ll get massively better but I won’t ever be even in the same zip code of mastery as her. I can’t do ANY thing, and neither can you. I don’t care who you are.
When I was in college, I had Edward Everett Hale’s words taped to the mirror in my dorm room. On line one it said: “I am only one.” On line two: “But I am one.” Line three: “I cannot do everything.” Line four: “But I can do something.” And then, “That which I can do, I ought to do. And that which I ought to do, by God’s grace I will do.”
We are all but and only all at the same time.
People don’t do extraordinary things by believing in flying fairies and unicorns with rainbow wings. Or by looking in the mirror while repeating affirmations. We do extraordinary things by paying attention, gathering facts, exercising agency and working really, really hard consistently, making the best of whatever we’ve got to work with every single day.
Admiral James Stockdale was the highest-ranking military officer to be held as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. He spent 8 years in confinement, in brutal conditions with no human contact except for the 20 times he was physically tortured. Once he made it out, everyone was desperate to know how he survived. What allowed him to endure and live while all the others around him perished along the way?
The admiral says there were two kinds of people who didn’t make it. The pessimists were the first to go. That doesn’t surprise any of us. They didn’t think they could, so they couldn’t. The mind is a powerful, powerful tool. But the optimists, oddly enough, were the next to go. Those who thought they’d be out by Thanksgiving but watched Thanksgiving come and go…and then thought they’d be out by Christmas, but watched Christmas come and go…and then thought they’d be out by Easter, but watched Easter come and go, didn’t make it. After a bit of devastating disappointments, they died of a broken heart.
Stockdale says too much of one or the other is a recipe for disaster. Getting out of prison in Vietnam hinged on coming to terms with the realities of his days, while never letting go of the ending he was striving toward. His faith was necessary, he says. But the ending he desired was not what he sat around thinking about all day. His focus was on surviving the moments. The faith he had in his ability to do that enabled him to make it through hours which turned into days, which turned into weeks and months and years. Short yardage gain after short yardage gain, Admiral John Stockdale groped his way toward the endzone.
The world calls it the “Stockdale Paradox”.
In layman’s terms, you pray and work and work and pray with a belief in your ability to tackle the hellacious hurdles facing you every day. Belief is integral, but so is agency. We’re created capable—that means it’s our job to do all that we can.
There will be all kinds of things that are not possible for you. That’s the case for all of us. But there will also be all kinds of things that are. Chasing those and pushing your respective envelopes with every fiber of your being will be the recipe for a full and satisfying life.
So don’t be dumb and quit when it gets hard. Or worse yet, not start because you’re afraid that it might be. Chase the stuff you love. Pull the red threads of what you’re good at (and there are LOTS of bright red threads within you even if you haven’t found them yet.) Be the best that ever existed in the art of being you.
And in case you think that’s fluffy, I assure you, it is not. Becoming the best version of yourself will be a lifelong project, and it will be the hardest, most important failure-littered work that you will ever do.
Sherri Coale
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