FAILURE (FAST-FORWARD #21)
All of us are accustomed to failure. In many ways, failure is one of those unwelcome or, at least, uninvited companions on the path of life. No one begins any endeavor with the hopes of falling short.
This week during our weekly meeting we discussed the concept and the reality of failure. Specifically, the topic was not moral failure or lapse in character. Indiscretions tend to be fairly clear, black and white, diagnosable with a label that causes everyone either to sigh or yell and then nod their heads in agreement.
The failure we talked about was the kind of failure that occurs when you make a decision; the decision does not work out how you planned; and the decision has mild or significant consequences. The “decision” type of failure can be even more difficult to work through than ethical mistakes. Decision failures are greyer, more nuanced, harder to pin down as to exactly why things did not go as planned. This kind of failure has more elements of mystery, confusion and shifting conclusions. Decision failures are riddled with “What ifs.”
Our conversation circled around two main questions:
How do you handle failure?
When things do not go the way you hoped (and prayed) how do you respond? It can be argued that one’s response to failure is even more important than the failure itself. How one acts after something goes askew is a reflection of one’s fortitude, one’s resilience, one’s perspective, even one’s worldview. By no means does anyone want to be defined by how one handles a failure, but over time patterns and themes evolve that help shape how we view ourselves when things don’t go our way. Failures shape us and refine us. Sometimes failures hold the power to destroy us. Sometimes failures forge us into far better people than if our endeavor had “succeeded.”
What is failure?
What does failure actually look like? How do you define it? Does your perception of failure change over time? Sometimes, upon reflection, one can see the beauty that reveals itself in the midst of something not going the way we wanted. A little distance from the event often uncovers that unplanned and unanticipated benefit scattered amidst the failure. By no means does good coming out of a failure take away from the disappointment and hardship of that failure. But failure can be redefined when a bigger picture is embraced. Often, more life lived and increased life experience can alter one’s assessment of a failure in the past.
When we navigate through current and past “failures” one of the group eventually reminds us that “you made the best decision you could, with the information you had at the time, with input from people you trusted most.” This statement is a good starting point and even a better conclusion.