Just minutes ago, as I was rebooting my computer, I got an error message: "Resuming failure...press any key to continue."
Failure is not something I understand very well. But lately I've been thinking about it. Failure. Inability to successfully complete a task. Losing instead of winning. Getting something wrong. Making a mistake.
We teach a lot about success. It's our goal; it's the American way. Even more than that, at least in church world, we call it our destiny. We teach that God loves us; therefore, He has destined us for success. Even more, we (mistakenly) teach that if people fail, they are somehow not people of faith. That they are somehow substandard individuals and substandard Christians.
You know what? Here's the thing: people fail. All people fail. Even the most seemingly perfect people fail. We may fail in different areas, some more visible than others, but we all fail in some way, probably more often than we would like to admit. I hate it, but it's a fact.
I think we do great harm in teaching people that they can never fail; that they are destined to always succeed; that if they fail, they are less of a person with less faith than someone else.
Failure is how we learn. Failure is how we grow.
My boss (and former English prof) frequently states that "learning is painful." Granted, he says this in part to try to assuage the grief of his panic-stricken students who are experiencing the fruit of his red pen. (He's right; it can be painful.) I think the reason why learning is painful is that we have to experience failure in order to truly learn something.
I think we do ourselves a great disservice in shunning failure. Success speakers like to cite Thomas Edison as an example. After all, he experienced great success in his work with light bulbs and elecricity. The moral of the story, usually, is that you should never give up because if you keep trying, success will come to you. Emphasis on success.
I don't think that's what the story is about. I think it's about experiencing your failures, and feeling the pain of them, and learning valuable lessons from them, and somehow growing into better people who are better equipped to succeed the next time.
"Resuming failure...press any key to continue." Maybe the best we can do is give the failure time to process and then use it as a step-stool as we go on with the rest of our lives.
4 comments:
I agree completely. I also think that failure (like success) is in the eye of the beholder. When I lose a case, many people would think of this as failure. I do not, necessarily. If I felt I failed every time I lost a case, there is no way I would continue doing this. There are some cases I take to trial that I'm going to lose, and some I should lose. But if I did everything I could for my client, this is success. If I did not, this is a failure. Regardless whether I won the case or lost it.
Interesting phrase: "resuming failure." What is it saying -- what I tried didn't work, so I'm going to try the same thing again? Pick up my failure where I left off last time, and maybe if I'm lucky complete the failure this time? That doesn't sound very hopeful. (I do hope your computer is working now.)
I'm pretty well acquainted with failure. I have never yet played a perfect concert, though that's always my goal. A 100% failure rate, if I choose to look at it like that. While I can't say I'm comfortable with failure -- I still hate making mistakes -- I've learned over time (with considerable assistance from my wife) to see past it a bit. For instance, I can give a flawed performance, that blesses people and sends them home with something of worth, from God through me. I think God uses our failures, and for more than learning experiences or character building (valuable as those are). His strength is perfected in our weakness.
I'd rather learn from success, of course, or at least from someone else's failures. But that doesn't seem to be the way of it; as S. says, "there's not much perfection this side of heaven." So while I still pursue perfection / success -- and hope I don't do too much "resuming failure" -- I'll try to see my work as God sees it, failures and all.
I don't think "resuming failure" means trying the same thing again and hoping not to fail. In the case of the computer, it shut down in the middle of "failure." (And it's fine now.) So when I rebooted or plugged in a power source (I forget), it couldn't just ignore the fact that the failure had happened. It had to pick up where it left off, continue until the process was through, and then restart (presumably without "failure" this time).
I like what you said about God using the things we call failures. As perfectionists, I think we have a very hard time seeing past the discrepancy between the real and our ideal. I like that God is bigger than that. It reminds me that maybe I should be, too.
I am frequently in awe at the people or situations God chooses to use. It is an unfathomable mystery to me--and yet I cannot deny that His choices...work.
Is it too pessimistic to say that "life is failure"? Life is a lot of things, certainly, but perhaps it's also a continuous string of failures. Large failures, small failures,"terminal" failures. I think it's better to know that they are there -- if I let myself be constantly surprised by failing (again!), often exactly the same way I failed before, I become quickly despondent. And I'd rather be a happy failure. :)
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