Gratitude Friday 11 1 24 Room in Life to Fail

“I am not concerned that you have fallen -- I am concerned that you arise.” ― Abraham Lincoln

I often reflect on the fact that I have a pretty good life. It is not perfect, no life is, but in consideration of what could have been, this is most definitively a lottery win. It did not look like this was in my cards in the later years of the second decade of my life. I failed big time early in life. Flat on face mess. Living with no plan beyond what I did that day and often failing to accomplish that without some kind of unqualified disaster.

I have written often about how that all turned around for me. How I found hope. How I found support. How I found a new way to live so I would not die. I did not realize in those dark moments of despair and abject failure that the seeds to all I hold dear were germinating in the soil of defeat. In hindsight, an unmitigated fiasco of a life was the best thing that ever happened to me. I also lived in a time, at least from my perspective, in which we had more room to fail. A time when there was a better sense that trial and error in life are vitally important. I was not forced at 15 to decide the course of my whole life and plot out what I was going to do and how I was going to accomplish it. That was a good thing. I had no clue anyway. In some ways, I still don’t!

Recently. I saw a social media post about pressures on young people to have a perfect life. The current era pressure to conform and perform that gets shaped into young people from their earliest years. Failure is not an option anymore. For kids in our current era, we are operating as if they must be lead of their chosen instrument in the orchestra, play on the varsity team, get a 4.0 and show that in their spare moments they volunteer at the local dog shelter so they can place at a good school and have that perfect life. Even if the truth is there is no perfect life and that many people living in the three car garage, big house in the burbs professional life are totally miserable. Pressuring kids to achieve this will likely leave many of them miserable as well. We should not set them up for failure by expecting so much from them.

I recently heard Jane Goodall give a talk. She recalled how when she was growing up, she told her mother she wanted to go to Africa and work with animals. Her mom did not tell her that this was an unwise career move. Instead, her mom told her that if this was her dream, she would eventually succeed if she kept trying to make it a reality. Of course, we know she did succeed. We all also know people who pursue dreams and find other things that mean even more to them, and they change course to the new direction. There are also people who try, fail and then stop trying. The only surety in any of these paths is the last one. If you fail and then stop trying to do things that matter to you, you are mired in failure.

I do not think as a society we are doing the next generation any favors by pushing the quest for perfection and not leaving any room for kids to be kids. For trial and error through failure. To learn from not being perfect. For many of us, not just those of us who have grappled with addiction, it is actually in these moments we find out who we are and what we want to do. We learn nothing from doing well, we learn by performing poorly and then trying again. I recall in school around age 12 first being asked in school what I wanted to do with my life. It is around that time you get choices. Honors classes, vocational tracts, etc.. I had no clue, so I didn’t do any of it. That was a mistake, but from which I eventually learned the importance of applying myself. The other truth is that everything about my life today and what I hold dear and find value in are things that were fully outside of my conception as a child. How can we expect a kid to have a clue of what they want in life? What immense pressure we are imposing on them!

What we used to do is tell kids to find something of interest and pursue that thing. We know that they may find that they don’t actually want to do that thing and take a different path. The message we send kids now is that everything must be mapped out and planned. We leave no room for adjustment. We tell them to purse a major in school in which will lead them to make a lot of money so that they can have a good life, even as we know that once you have enough money for the basics, what governs happiness in life has nothing to do with money or the high-status job with an impressive title.

From where I sit, we can and should do a lot more to teach young people that failure is part of a successful life and how to learn from failure rather than to succeed at everything, every time. You do not get a trophy for everything you do in a life and sometimes you come in last. Sometimes the very best thing to happen to a person is to come in last, and as Lincoln’s quote above illuminates, what they do next with that experience is everything.

What we are doing in our society is failing to teach resilience. We have a win at any cost mentality, and it is not a good lesson for our young people. Many of us, if we stop to think about it were defined by failure in which we had the opportunity to pick ourselves up and try again. We must always make room for the next generation to do the same. I am grateful I had room to fail in my own life.

What are you grateful for today?