FAILURE
Whenever I fail, and it’s been frequent though only rarely fatal, I try to think of Thomas Edison’s adage: "I haven't failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." But failure covers a lot of ground, from the utterly abject to the totally trivial, from targeted actions to things of the heart, from mental states such as hope to physical responses such as falling. Google generates dozens of failure analyses for organizations and even societies.
How does anyone survive—suffer and recover—from any of these. Surely life hands out lessons galore, like my second grade teacher handed out demerits of many types with various possible outcomes.
Perhaps the kindest way to re-frame failure is to regard it as a set-back, a puddle which has muddied one’s shoes but which can be rectified by a quick cleaning. Or a romance that’s grown sour or boring or ended and can be set right by moving on. Set-backs are framed by hope, like a photo that can be replaced in its frame by another. Hope, then, is the weapon to use on failure.
But hope can be dashed.
Now there is a neurobiology of failure, so to speak (unspeak if you read the literature). The brain fails frequently in memory storage and retrieval. In the course of conversation you may suddenly find yourself unable to find a word or name that you know you know. But, just then, it will not come to mind. This brain process is called ecphory. It is not clear if the memory traces, in neurobiological terms, the engrams are stored indefinitely or vanish over time from lack of retrieval or remain inaccessible. Retrieval cues seem to diminish or suffer greater interference as the brain ages. Ecphory failure can be a painful and embarrassing experience.
Life is full of risks, some from deliberate efforts to pursue danger merely for the thrill, other risks occur spontaneously and in the course of living one’s life. Facing any risk always risks failure. So these two experiential events haunt us from birth forward, pacing our progress like signals in a long long night.
What about regret: the remembrance of past failures never repaired, the wrong turn that seemed right at the time but proved very wrong, the career choice that was made out of need or obligation or misinformation. Failures that shaped the future, that changed one’s life forever. And there is no way back. Regret, remorse, emotional catch points that hang around us like an albatross. Such failure is a pock mark we must wear even if no one else can see it.
Which takes us to questions of character: do we face and endure failure with fortitude or fragility. Psychopaths are perhaps the most vulnerable when failure looms a them, causing them to struggle at all odds not to fail, no hold barred odds, crime and even murder included. Empathically close on the heels of psychopaths are narcissists. Even the anticipation of failure can rile all their efforts to avoid it, often resulting in fierce anger and rage. For the rest of us failure is just another tick in the boxes life presents to us. We carry on, wounded soldiers holding ground and sallying forth.
Remember hope?
