Failure and the Boogeyman

By: EM Sky
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:40:02
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Failure is like the boogeyman. They both have the power to incite terror, they both get scarier the more you think about them, and they're both entirely made-up.

I can hear the protests already: "What? Failure's made-up? Tell that to my eighth-grade history teacher!"

Yes, failure is made-up. People invented eighth-grade history, and people invented the possibility of failing eighth-grade history. We invented failure, and then we manifested it everywhere. But it's still fictitious. It's just become a highly realistic fiction.

Human beings are masters at making things up. Look at America, for example. The United States is also entirely made-up. Seriously, it is. We may have buildings and historical documents and border patrols, but the United States is still ultimately just an idea--an idea defended by the most technologically advanced weaponry known to humanity, to be sure, but nonetheless an idea.

Without the idea behind it, the infrastructure of the United States would still exist, but it would exist as parts of Canada, Mexico, France, Great Britain, and who knows what other countries. The tangible pieces would still be there, but they wouldn't be the United States.

That's what failure is too: a powerfully imagined invention of humanity.

Without the idea of failure, there are still things that work and things that don't work, but there is no such thing as failure, per se. Failure is a concept, nothing more.

When we remove the idea of failure from our vocabulary, we're left with an innocuous concept of experimentation and an incredibly sharp learning curve. Life without the idea of failure sounds something like this: "Well, I tried one thing, and it worked just like I expected it to, so that was nice but a little dull. But then I tried something else, and it worked out completely differently than I expected, so finally I knew I was getting somewhere interesting!"

Sounds great, right? So why isn't life like that now? If failure isn't real, than why do we believe in it?

We believe in it for the same reason we believe in America: we are taught to infuse our tangible reality with various unquestionable ideas--like seeing buildings and people and being told that this is "America"--and eventually we forget that the idea and the tangible reality underneath are two different things.

So what we think about our reality becomes our reality, and most of what we think about comes down to what we keep track of and how we keep track of it. In America, we keep track of population size, political boundaries, production levels, congressional legislation, market trends, and so on. These are the facts and figures that manifest the idea of America into reality.

In the case of failure, the tracking usually starts in school. For most people, life before school is just a series of interesting experiences. Then suddenly people start writing stuff down and sending home report cards. There aren't any more chances to start each day fresh. What happened yesterday is now a part of our "permanent record."

Even people who weren't present at the time can look up that record and see the complexity of our human experience summed up in a single letter, 'A' through 'F'. Our "performance" is suddenly measured, judged, and carried with us through time and space. After kindergarten, the past becomes our living present.

We know from more enlightened teachings that we should let go of the past, and yet we have created a world in which the past is permanently on file. If we want to stop believing in failure, we have to reimagine the world that has created it.

"Tests," for example, should be about learning, not about judging. Imagine a school system that allowed children to take as many tests as he or she needed until that child had grasped the concepts well enough to score perfectly. Then every score written down would be an "A," and every child would be prepared for the material that came next. The possibility of failure would not exist.

The only reason "failure" exists is because we limit our chances of success. Imagine what our world would look like if we all stopped doing that!

What if every aspiring writer gave themselves as many submissions as they needed to get published and only kept track of the "yes" letters? What if every aspiring actor gave themselves as many auditions as they needed to get cast in a show? What if every entrepreneur gave themselves as many chances as they needed to hit on the right formula for success?

Well, we'd have a world full of people as successful as J. K. Rowling, Johnny Depp, and Bill Gates, that's what. We'd probably also have solar-powered hover cars, desert agriculture, and a cure for every form of cancer on the planet. Every modern invention, from the light bulb to the airplane, came out of a whole lot of trying.

Imagine now where your own life would be if from this day forward you never once chose to limit your chances of success. Imagine what you would be doing today if you didn't believe in failure.

I'm not talking about quitting your day job tomorrow and risking your family's home on nothing but a bright idea. That definitely leaves the door open for "failure." We live in a world of banks, investment firms, credit card companies, and government agencies that all believe in failure, which is a big part of what turns the mere concept of failure into a tangible possibility.

No, I'm talking about giving yourself as many chances as you need to succeed, without making a mental report card out of the attempts that don't work. Learn from them so you can try something else, but don't keep score. Don't let them mean that you've failed.

Suddenly, you can separate the faulty idea from the perfect reality. The learning process still exists, but there's no such thing as "failure." And worrying about it seems as silly as worrying about the boogeyman.

That's the beauty of imaginary things: if you stop believing in them, they really don't exist anymore.

EM Sky--on Business, Life and Society for the Whole Human Being.

Article source: Expert Articles