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Failing Gloriously.

Posted by John on June 3rd, 2010 at 10:33 pm · 6 Comments

“To be great, we must attempt so much that we not only are in danger of forever failing, but that we do fail ..and in the failure create something greater than if we had set our sights lower.” Jeff Vandermeer, Booklife

I live in a state of constant failure. I take on more that I can realistically handle, and I aim much higher than I can probably ever achieve. I determine my self-worth in large part by my distance from the top–i.e., the distance I failed to cover, instead of the distance that I climbed from the bottom.

I find deep comfort in Jeff Vandermeer’s quote. I’m not sure if anyone else feels this way, but it’s like I needed someone to give me permission to fail. And not just fail in the process of achieving a goal, but to fail and fail again (or, as Beckett said: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”)

One more quote, and a bit more muddling of metaphors: Thoreau said that our dreams should be in the clouds, but that we should set about building the foundations to support them. What do you do when your dreams are soaring with the cirrus clouds? What if they want to launch into space?

I refuse to aim lower.

Maybe it’s the Japanese in me. There is a place for the honorable loser. The great medieval epic, the Tale of the Heike, is named for the losers of the Gempei War. I want to fail and fail again. Because if I only fail when I set my sights high and stretch myself in the vain struggle to achieve them. I will fail. I will try again and fail better. And by so doing, I will fail gloriously.

My failures for today:

  • I ignored several important projects at work, but moved three others forward.
  • I skipped strength training, but biked 15 miles.
  • I gorged on free pizza and sandwiches, and broke down and got an ice cream sundae, but this was after I went to CatGirl’s school art show (and had some great convos with her artistic classmates and with community arts supporters).
  • I lost my flash fic due to a file-syncing snafu, then after being depressed about it for a few minutes, I began rewriting it.

Tags: Clarion West · Writing

6 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Melanie // Jun 3, 2010 at 10:56 pm

    You know, I don’t often think off what I do with the language of failure- usually I can pull back the lens to see that there’s a much bigger picture that I can’t see. Today is not one of those days! Thanks for posting this, John. Tomorrow I will be the best unemployed person I can be.

  • 2 Ryan // Jun 4, 2010 at 9:19 am

    Loved. This.

  • 3 Elise // Jun 4, 2010 at 9:59 am

    That’s inspirational. It would have been much more realistic and useful than the “success” graudation speeches I heard last week.

  • 4 Elaine // Jun 4, 2010 at 11:26 am

    I find that I usually learn much more if I fail at something, or if I go through little failures on the way to succeeding at a bigger project.

    Also, I had an anthropology teacher/mentor at community college who often said that failure is good for the soul. I suspect he is correct, although he often horrified his honors students, who were not used to ever failing at anything, when he said that.

    My knitting is one place where I experience failure fairly often. It is rare that I can get through a project without having to frog it, or at least partially do so, two or three times. (Frogging, for those of you who don’t knit, means to rip something out. Rip it, Rip it, rip it…sounds a lot like a frog. Ribbit! :) ) I tend to appreciate those projects more than the ones I can get through without any problems.

    Elaine

  • 5 G // Jun 4, 2010 at 4:34 pm

    thank you for writing this.

  • 6 angryyoungwoman // Jun 5, 2010 at 1:28 pm

    Thank you, John. Thank you so so so so much. Sometimes I am sad because I think this past decade was just failure after failure (didn’t finish college, didn’t work, was in and out of the hospital) but the past six month or so have been up and up and up. I have been building on a decade of failure.

    It is good to know that we learn from failure, that failure is normal and even good. Thank you for even writing about this.

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