In Praise of Failure

What a bizarre title. Why on earth would anyone praise failure? This light bulb looks spectacular, but it sure as heck is not functional as a light bulb anymore.

We are taught to fear failure. In school, failing is a source of shame - we are supposed to get it right the first time.  If you are the coach of a professional team, failure is guaranteed to earn you a one-way ticket out of your job. Other careers may be a little more forgiving, but in general, if you fail on a regular basis, you are regarded with contempt and pity. There is clearly something wrong with a broken light bulb, no matter how brightly it flares.

When I posted on Facebook the other day that I was planning to blog about failure, one person queried me about it and suggested writing about challenge instead. It's hard to accept that failure can be a good thing.

Another friend pointed me to this video of  J.K. Rowling speaking on the benefits of failure:





The most striking words she says here, in my opinion, are that failure at the conventional life that her parents envisioned for her allowed her to concentrate on what she really wanted to do, namely her writing. If, she says, she had been successful at the other things she tried to do, she probably would never have had the discipline and the concentration to write, and the world would never have been enriched by Harry Potter.

I myself, in my life, have been very successful at things that turned out not to matter very much, and which ended up being mere stepping stones to an unexpected outcome of greater value. Many people would consider the acquisition of a Ph.D. in physics to be a very successful achievement - and yet it turns out I did not want to be a research physicist, and that attempting to fit myself into that mould led me into depression and bad choices. Ultimately, though, that Ph.D. program gave me the husband and family I have today.

A B.Ed. eventually followed, but I found that I was a very square peg in the round hole of high school teaching. While I loved working with the kids, the things that I had hated about high school thirty-five years ago were still there, unfortunately. However, those two years of my life that I sank into the B.Ed. program allowed me to advocate far more effectively for my children than I would ever have been able to without it. It also cemented the teaching skills I have always had intuitively, even if I never get a "real job" as a teacher.

Where am I going with this? I was always the kid with so much potential. I am sure I have been a disappointment to my parents and teachers who thought I would build a career in science or education or maybe something else.

I'm still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up, how I can make an impact. Maybe I never will, but I hope and believe there is a contribution I can make to the redemption of the world. I just have to figure out what it is, given that every ostensible failure has led to an unexpected success in a different realm, and that I am not yet done with this journey. I am hopeful that my writing and teaching will help someone, somewhere, someday. That light bulb has failed in its ostensible purpose, but oh, what a gorgeous picture!

How about you, how have your failures given you unexpected gifts and strengths?

Goals Change

This time of year people seem to spend a lot of time thinking about their goals. Must be that looming January 1st coming up. A new opportunity, for sure, a fresh year. But also a moment when you need to face what you achieved in the past year, and what you didn't. The Resistance generally has a field day with the latter. We are so good at breaking ourselves down; if anybody else talked to us the way we talk to ourselves we'd run a mile in the opposite direction.

Somebody on Facebook asked whether we were where we thought we would be 10 years ago. Being a young 'un, she is only 10 years out from high school - in my case, it's been over 30 years. Gulp. What were my goals then, and what have I achieved?

There is no question that I have achieved one of my major goals, although I might not have articulated it that well at the time. I have a husband and three lovely children, all of whom are bidding fair to become people I'm going to want to know when they are adults. Not something to be taken lightly, I assure you. I made a couple of false starts on the marriage front, and I'm very glad I didn't make any innocent bystanders in those circumstances.

When I signed up to study physics in 1983 it was a very wrong choice for me, made for all the wrong reasons. I can't believe I made it all the way to a Ph.D. Just because I'm smart and capable of doing something didn't mean I had to do it. My health suffered along the way as all the wrong reasons went straight for my gut. I'm still paying the price for that. I would never have finished it without the support of my wonderful husband. It is also true that I would never have met him if I had not gone through the agony of trying to become a physicist. Maybe that was the purpose of the exercise?

After we came here,  I became a research scientist for a few years. Not the right thing for me, either. Again, I'm smart and capable and I did quite well, but I didn't like it. So I became a university instructor for a few years. I did well, but the university was looking to increase its research profile, so there was no job for a person who didn't want to do physics research. Onwards.

I went back to university and got a Bachelor of Education degree. Now I am a certified teacher, and I do enjoy teaching. I'm also slowly pursuing a certificate in Technical Communication, because writing seems to be one of the things I do best, and is also most compatible with spending time with my children and taking care of my health. Sleep deprivation, in particular, can be problematic for teachers, especially relatively new ones, and my health depends quite crucially on getting enough sleep. It's an issue.

Regardless of where I end up with the teaching, there is no question that the B.Ed., like the Ph.D. before it, was not a waste of time. When I need to advocate for my children, I get a whole different level of respect and cooperation from the teachers, because I speak their language and understand their perspective.

So many twists and turns in the road, and the show ain't over yet. I was talking with a friend today about putting together a resume as a technical writer, and she told me to put in every piece of software I ever worked with. Oh, the memories of using WordPerfect in the 80s, of programming in FORTRAN and C and C++ in the 90s. So many things that had their uses in the past, and may turn out to be unexpectedly useful in the future.

Goals are great to have, but they do tend to shift with time ... how have yours twisted and turned and shook themselves while you weren't looking?