Adam Savage talks about the importance of failure (at the Maker Faire)
I feel very strongly that this is right and true for me. I hold some of my failures as precious because they are reminders present somewhere in my mind that keep me from (mostly) failing in that way again. Not every failure rises to such stature, but some of the phenomenal ones do. Also, some of the minor ones that had disastrous consequences.
I think one of the major differences between people who “make it” and people who don’t is how we cope with failure. I’ve probably written about it a dozen times, and but I can’t write about it often enough. There is a difference between accepting ownership of a failure and being resigned to a personal flaw. It’s the difference between “I blew that math test” and “I’ll never be good at math”.
I have occasionally had friends leap to the latter conclusion about something, and it makes me want to shake them until Morale Improves: not every experience can be blown into the epitome of who you are, and who you are now does not have to be who you are tomorrow.
Identity is such a funny, fucked-up thing. We spend a good two decades trying to discover “who we are”, and then, with that certainty, we leap into the world … only to discover as we go along that we don’t know who we are after all. Because who we are continues to change, with every experience. As I see it, believing that there is a particular “I” that we are supposed to be is a joke that our obsessively-categorizing mind plays on us – other people must put us in boxes, and we must put ourselves in boxes, and once we’ve grown out of being a teenager, we aren’t allowed to try being someone else for a change without losing our “authenticity”.
I say that a person has two choices: Be who other people have decided you are, or be who you have decided to be. That starts with owning our actions, owning who we are, and ends with the belief that tomorrow we can choose to be a better person, as we define it.
QFT!
This is a core defining principal that I feel very strongly about. As a guiding mission statement it works really well. Just a matter of truly groking it and taking it to heart. Which is easier said than done sometimes.
This resonates with me and my experiences on a number of levels. Firstly, the part that’s taught a course on education: the model that learning occurs when failing to do something makes us re-evaluate our model of the world, and how attributing our successes and failures well can improve motivation.
Secondly, on a very personal level. It took me long years to get out of the shadow of how others saw me, but with reflection, support and love I think I’ve grown into the man I want to be. I’ve stopped going through the motions and started believing in myself. I’ve started looking at adversity more as something to overcome, not as something that’s keeping me where I am.
And yes, we do change. If you told me ten years ago I’d be planning to emigrate to the U.S. so I could marry a woman from Kentucky, and that our plans for the future would include having a small hobby farm together somewhere, I’d probably have looked at you like you’d just grown an additional head. But y’know, I can’t think of anything else I’d rather be doing with my life right now :-)
*grins* I’m sure Lucy and I would love to check it out. :) She has plans for a cow!
I can dig it.
and yes, I am still asleep
Brilliant stuff, and you’re right, it really can’t be written about too often. There’s nothing good (imo) in “making an identity for yourself” out of anything — good or bad — that happens to you. People end up trapped in concepts — victim, martyr, egghead, asshole, slut, you name it — mostly just due to how much they end up mentally attached to the idea.
It’s like seeing a black sheep and insisting they’re all black. A smart person knows that only this one is black for sure. A genius knows that only this one is black on one side!
Linked to this, great post. *hugs*
Linked to here from eposia’s LJ. Excellent philosophy, great post.
Thanks :)