Dave is just thinking about writing the second part of an autobiography (‘Sex Love & Life’ the first) and trying to get his head around how it will all fit together and wondering if ‘Fear of failure’ might be too honest a title to use… and this writing is perhaps just a start on those musings.
I saw an quote somewhere on the net the other day that really cheered me up. All about failure. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.” It sounds like Winston Churchill and yes, it is. You can almost hear him saying it, can’t you? Or if you’re slightly cynical , imagine him saying it to his War Cabinet to justify carrying on with a manoeuvre or operation that has begun badly.
But then you see another quote and you think hmm, I think that’s taking it all a little too far. Thomas Edison famously once said, “I have not failed 10,000 times—I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.” Yeh right Thomas, that’s just you not thinking straight. You could fairly easily spend half your life finding 10,000 things that don’t work but there are a lot of counselors, books and bloggers ready to convince you that failure is a good thing, or to be fair, on how to put a positive spin on failure. There are even manuals telling you things about failure, such as ‘six reasons why fear of failure is positive’. (You’re wondering how and why? See https://www.theperformanceroom.co.uk/fear-of-failure/ )
Yet despite my professed pessimism, I think they have a point. I do think that personally I’ve always been haunted by a fear of failure and as such ‘stressed out about it’ many times. And yet, despite the many things I’ve tried and failed at in a half century of ‘experimentation’ shall we call it, I have learnt not to be so afraid of it at a personal level in that time. Yes, I failed but the world didn’t implode around me, I got up, dusted myself off and walked on. Of course this is not to say that failure, failure per se, is a good thing. On a wider level for example, consider the failure to prevent a war in the Ukraine, failure to tackle Covid properly, failure to manage a country’s economy well, such that millions are forced to live below the poverty line? These are clearly not good things.
Yet at a more personal level failure is at least managable. Thinking of my early fear of failure growing up I’m reminded of Neil Tennant’s wonderfully concise lyrics to the Pet Shop Boys song ‘It’s a sin” released in June 1987, just as I turned thirty (and celebrated with a huge party, and by playing the track at least two or three times during the night):
When I look back upon my life it’s always with a sense of shame
I’ve always been the one to blame For everything I long to do
no matter when or where or who has one thing in common too
It’s a, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a sin..
Oh yes. Thirty up and tick, tick, tick Neil – of course I recognised I wasn’t the only one it resonated with by a country mile (partly why it was quite so successful). Hell, Russell T Davies even made a BBC series titled after it last year. Some things have changed, but many things remain much the same. Guilt is one hell of a trip. So when I left my little village in Cornwall to come up to London I was already carrying much of that baggage around, as well as the huge red suitcase I alighted from the train with at Paddington station.
And yes, I worked through it but the scars are still there. I still tear up when I see a soppy coming out story (Heartstopper anyone?); my heart doesn’t stop but yes, it skips a beat, simply because I’m still relating to it and the underlying internal /external crap, that usually goes with it, is still there inside somewhere; locked up yes but it’s in there somewhere. No amount of counselling will ever remove that.
Then there’s the many things since then that I’ve tried and failed at. Maths and Physics at an advanced level? Big fail. Film production company? Eventual fail. Outdoor adventure group for gay men? Fail. Three way relationship? Fail. Open a business in Ibiza? Fail. Keep a educational company open, to train up Erasmus funded European teenagers in Brighton, UK post Brexit? Fail. Love and forgive my Dad. Yeh well that’s a big one. A really big one. A few years ago I would have said ‘fail’ but maybe, just maybe, I pulled that one back before he passed away last year. Thank god. (No really, thank God but it’s a longer story than this piece has time for).
So many times I am aware that I have not come up with the goods. And yet. I suppose the getting of wisdom is what you really get in older age, after personal failure. I still see far too little written today about wisdom. Of course being a ‘Wiseman’ I’ve always had it thrown at me. ‘Wise man?’ said my third form music teacher. Let’s see how wise you are shall we? Fail. Cue internal shame that lasted far longer than it had any right too. But wisdom is maligned. How many songs do you know with wisdom in the title. No, I couldn’t get past two or three either. Nevertheless, some of my favourite songs are about the getting of wisdom. Christian ‘Halo’ James in his one hit wonder in the eighties (‘Could have told you so.‘.) sang
Could have told you so,
Could have told you Dreams would come and go
Could have told you so,
But you were young .. How would you know?
Could have told you so.. Halo James (1986)
So let’s hear it more often. Yes I failed but I became wiser. I understood more about life. I realised how to let people down so they bruised less, I realised how making mistakes is part and parcel of human nature, I realised that no-one really holds all the aces, even if it might seem so at the time. That there is a way to fail (and we will all fail at some things, however golden we are) but to at least fail well. To come out of the other side of failure head held high because you are wiser, (and not sadder, as the cliche goes), because you at least tried, you at least had a vision, you at least now understand why it didn’t work out (and I think that’s quite important , there’s nothing wrong with examining failure retrospectively to better understand it).
In fact, I think an understanding of failure is critical to be coming wiser and yes, whilst I realise that statement is hardly rocket science I’ve sometimes been surprised how many people fail and assign blame (to others, to themselves) without really understanding it. It’s perhaps natural that we want to escape from failures as soon as we can but they really do deserve some introspection on our parts so we can move on more comfortably and make changes if they are necessary.. to our lives, our relationships, within our community and our friends. The getting of wisdom is really less about accumulating all the knowledge in the world, it is about learning to understand ourselves better, when and why we succeed and why we sometimes fail.
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